Caster Semenya Photos
Caster Semenya Photos:Albert Pujols knows that, on every home run, his swing connects with suspicion. So many people want to believe in him, to imagine each homer sweeping baseball’s doping scandals further into the past. Pujols can’t definitively prove that he is different, that he is clean. Usain Bolt crushes the 100-meter world record again. He is dazzling, a showman with rock-star panache who promises to revive track and field. But like Pujols, he is stalked by an ugly history.
Three of the last eight men (Ben Johnson, Tim Montgomery and Justin Gatlin) to break the 100-meter record have been banned for doping. Montgomery kept the mark for almost three years before federal agents uncovered what the drug tests missed. So Bolt and Pujols are stuck answering for the sins of their predecessors. But in this era of profound skepticism, they should be grateful for one thing: Nobody will ever watch them excel and then accuse them of not being real men.
South African teenager Caster Semenya, the winner of the women’s 800-meter race at the world championships, has been undergoing gender-verification testing. She must be examined by, among others, a gynecologist, psychologist and endocrinologist. Semenya, 18, reportedly has a deep voice, and her pictures show a physique notably more muscular than the bodies of even her most accomplished rivals. She has dropped almost nine seconds from her best 800 time in the last year – the type of improvement that usually suggests performance-enhancing drugs.
