Semenya lawyer denies runner planning to sue IAAF, SA athletics

Dec 29, 2009, 13:07 GMT

Johannesburg - South Africa's controversial 800-metre champion runner Caster Semenya has 'absolutely' no plans to sue the IAAF world athletics body and Athletics South Africa (ASA) for over 130 million dollars, her lawyer said Tuesday.

Lawyer Greg Nott was responding to a report on insidethegames.biz sports website alleging Semenya planned to sue the IAAF for 120 million dollars and ASA for 18 million dollars over their handling of her gender tests.

'We are very happily engaging the IAAF on a number of occasions, but nothing to do with any kind of suing,' Nott of the Dewey & LeBoeuf firm told the South African Press Association (SAPA).

'There is no smell of it. No whiff of it and if there was I would be the first to tell you,' he said.

Ray Mali, interim chairman of the ASA's board, also told SAPA he knew nothing of any lawsuit.

The IAAF ordered gender tests on Semenya in the run-up to the world athletics championships in Berlin in August on account of her masculine build and rapidly-improved times.

An Australian newspaper claimed the tests showed Semenya to be intersexed (having both male and female characteristics). The IAAF had been due to release the results in November but held them back, saying further tests would be necessary to decide her fate as an athlete but that she would be allowed keep her 800m gold medal in any event.

Both the IAAF and Athletics South Africa have drawn fierce criticism over their handling of the Semenya affair - the IAAF for going public with its doubts over Semenya's gender and the leaking of the results, and ASA for initially crying foul over the tests only to later admit it had arranged secret sex tests on Semenya in South Africa at the behest of the IAAF.

ASA president Leonard Chuene and his board were suspended over the matter.

Most South Africans, meanwhile, have rallied behind Semenya, who hails from a remote northern village and shuns media contact but was reported by her ex-coach and family to have been distraught over the affair.

Nott's firm is the firm that successfully represented South African paralympian Oscar Pistorius last year in his bid to be allowed compete in the Beijing Olympics.

The IAAF barred the double-amputee sprinter who runs on carbon-fibre blades from able-bodied competition but the ban was overturned on appeal.