LEXPERT MAGAZINE
|
MAY 2019 15
FEATURES
one, which she failed. Someone leaked it to
the media, which ran headlines question-
ing whether she was a boy or girl."
Ultimately, however, Chand prevailed.
Her DWPV legal team won a stunning vic-
tory when the COA declared that IAAF
regulations banning Chand because of her
high testosterone levels were discrimina-
tory, and that banning her from compet-
ing was not a "necessary and proportionate
means of preserving fairness in athletics
competition and/or policing the binary
male/female classification."
As the Chand panel saw it, there was in-
sufficient evidence that high testosterone
levels gave individuals a significant enough
advantage to validate the IAAF's hyperan-
drogenism regulations. But the COA did
give the IAAF the opportunity to provide
further evidence to validate the regulations.
Instead, in March 2018, the IAAF in-
formed the CAS that it intended to with-
draw the existing regulations and replace
them with new ones.
"e new rules applied only to distances
between 400 and 1500 metres, and they
only applied to international competi-
tions," Bunting says. "So that closed the
case against Dutee, who ran the 100 and
200 and competed in the Rio Olympics."
But it didn't close the case against Se-
menya. e new rules, known as the DSD
regulations, required her and other females
with naturally-occurring testosterone lev-
els above a prescribed limit to reduce that
level and maintain it for six months to
maintain their eligibility.
Semenya and Athletics South Africa
challenged the regulation. Greg Nott of
Johannesburg, now head of Norton Rose
Fulbright's Africa team, had represented
Semenya since she was a young track star.
"With my youngest son, omas, I was
watching the 800 metre competition in the
2009 world championships held in Berlin,
and we were screaming our heads off for
Caster," Nott recalls. "But before we knew it,
she was stripped of her title and suspended."
e very next day, Nott decided to reach
out to the South African Minister of Sport
and offer his services.
"At the time, I was the managing partner
of the South African office of a global law
firm with global reach," he says. "We had
a dynamic Sports Law department and I
thought, 'How can I sit by idly watching
our young athlete being bullied?' especially
when I had at my disposal the tools to meet
fire with fire."
e scenario struck a chord with Nott
partly because he had spent a long time in
the country's anti-apartheid movement.
"e actions against Caster smacked of
