The last fortnight saw the IAAF World Championships being held in Berlin and plenty of outstanding performances, including Bolt’s 9.58 and 19.19, but the race that’s created the most controversy was undoubtedly the Women’s 800m, won comfortably by Caster Semenya. The problem seems to be that there are significant doubts about whether or not Caster is actually a woman. It’s clear from race photos that she’s lacking male genitalia, but otherwise her physique, facial bone structure and voice all suggest a maleness, as does the fact that she has shown testosterone levels three times higher than ‘normal’ women, and that she ran almost 2 seconds faster than the next woman, despite, in her own words, taking it easy for the last 200m!

Anyway, the IAAF have ordered comprehensive sex determination tests, which will take a couple of weeks to complete. For a more detailed analysis of what’s involved, this article at competitor.com, entitled What Is Caster Semenya? is worth a read.

Caster Semenya has become an overnight sensation. Regrettably it has been for her role in sport’s biggest current controversy – the question whether she might in fact be biologically part male. Some have simplified this question to a debate over whether Semenya is male or female, which is incorrect. Rather, the true question is whether Semenya may be intersex, which refers to a condition where ambiguous genitalia are present, and the genes don’t match up with the physiological development and appearance, making the classification of the person as either male or female is very difficult.

Intersex conditions result from what are called disorders of sexual development (DSDs). Authorities have suggested three broad categories of this condition. The first is that of a masculinized female; the second is an under-masculinized male; and the third is true hermaphroditism. In Semenya’s case, it would seem that one of the first two categories – the masculinzed female or under-masculinized male – may apply.

It has also been revealed that Dr. Ekkart Arbeit, the disgraced former East German coach, has been working with Semenya, so perhaps we’re seeing a return to the dark days of giving women such massive doses of steroids that they’ve developed male features. This article, on one of Arbeit’s previous subjects, Andreas (nee Heidi) Kreiger, is indicative of how things were in the GDR.

By the time Krieger arrived at the Dynamo Club [at 13yrs old], the doping officials - intoxicated by the success of their athletes - had taken steroid violations to scarcely believable levels. An average teenage girl produces about half a milligram of testosterone per day. Krieger, by the middle of her career, was being fed 30 milligrams of anabolic steroids each day, far in excess of Ben Johnson, the Canadian sprinter, at the height of his drugs programme.

State scientists also developed STS 646, an anabolic steroid that caused male characteristics in women at a rate 16 times that of Oral-Turinabol. It was distributed to coaches even though it had not been approved for human use, not even in stage one clinical trials. Even Höppner expressed his doubts, telling the Stasi that he was not willing to be held responsible. But Manfred Ewald, the president of the sports federation at the time, insisted that they were necessary and ordered an additional 63,000 tablets. Krieger was probably one of the recipients.

The Tour finished last night, or 2am this morning if you were watching it live in Sydney like me. It’s my July ritual, now that SBS are providing full, live coverage, and Jacqui knows that once early July rolls around I own the TV from about 10pm every night, unless it’s a rest day (for the Tour, not me).

This year’s race was somewhat disappointing. The return of the Team Time Trial was a farce. It hasn’t been in the race since Armstrong last competed in 2005, and all of a sudden makes a return just as Lance returns. Sure enough, Astana dominated, finishing the stage with their riders in 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th, providing them with a stranglehold on the race. More importantly, riders who were hoping to make a difference on GC such as Carlos Sastre and Cadel Evans, were effectively knocked out of the race after the 4th stage, losing 1:38 and 2:36 respectively. Hopefully next year Prudhomme goes back to a non-TTT course.

The return of Lance Armstrong turned the race into a bit of a soap opera as well, with more focus on the internal goings on of Team Astana than on the race itself, and his constant spin was a bit annoying. Contador was clearly the better rider, and all public pronouncements since Armstrong announced his return have been designed to reassure Contador that he’s the team’s No.1 rider. However, actions speak louder than words and it became apparent pretty quickly that Armstrong was No.1 and he would do everything possible to destabilise Contador, all the while uttering reassuring sound bites, proclaiming that he was riding according to team orders. Technically this was true, though as Bruyneel is firmly in Armstrong’s camp, “riding to team orders” does not mean “riding in support of Contador”.

Contador, to his credit, saw the writing on the wall a long time ago, and came to the race prepared for battle. He beat Lance in the prologue and put time into him on every mountain top finish, even when it wasn’t strictly necessary, just to hammer home to Lance that he had no chance. He mostly went along with Lance’s games in the media-despite heavy criticism from Lance and Bruyneel about disobeying team orders-but let his legs do the talking on the road. What they said was loud and clear: “I can take anything you throw at me and still kick your ass.”

Now that it’s all over, Lance is forming his own team with Bruyneel for next year and Contador will be on the move somewhere else, probably to Caisse d’Epargne. In a real scumbag move, Armstrong didn’t bother showing up to the team party to celebrate Contador’s win, preferring instead to have a few drinks with the investors in his new team. Wanker.

A fundamental tenet of testing for performance-enhancing drugs in sports is that an athlete can expect to be tested at any time, at any place, without warning. To enable this, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has the ‘whereabouts rule’. This rule states that those athletes on its target list, which in swimming’s case means the Top 50 in the world in each event, must keep WADA informed of where they’ll be for at least one hour each day. In practice, this means that the athlete will enter this data three months in advance, and then can change details via SMS, fax etc. according to circumstances. If a tester shows up to where the athlete has said they’ll be, and they’re nor there, it counts as a missed test. Three missed tests and you’re banned.

Now FIFA signed up to WADA’s anti-doping code ages ago, but they’re now complaining that the whereabouts rule shouldn’t apply to footballers, and that footballers should be treated differently to athletes in other sports.

The Guardian wonders why FIFA expects to be treated differently and mentions the results from a recent French study.

The answer, I believe, lies in the findings of a study carried by a French anti-doping agency, which tested hair samples from 138 professional athletes, including 32 footballers. (Unlike urine samples, where evidence of steroid use is “washed out” within days, hair samples can retain traces of drugs much longer.) The results — published in France last week but completely ignored in this country — revealed that seven players (21.8%) tested “positive” for some form of banned drug, a far greater proportion than that found in sports such as rugby and, ahem, cycling. It is a bad day indeed for football when it places higher in the league table of drug use than professional cycling, although, in fairness, there are reasons to be cautious about the French study.Most obviously, it took place only in France, which may or may not have a different culture of drug use than other European countries. Hair sample testing has no legal status in France, or anywhere else for that matter, and the identities of those who tested positive will never be revealed.

Football in Australia has always been the poor cousin of the ‘native’ codes, Australian Football (AFL) and Rugby League (NRL), generally gaining very little air time and being seen as a game for immigrants, or Wogs, Sheilas and Poofters as the title of Johnny Warren’s auto-biography suggests. The old National Soccer League was disbanded a few years ago, and relaunched after a year’s break as the A-League, an 8-team competition spread across the country.

Sydney FC became my local team, as their home stadium is about 3km from my house, and I’d always considered becoming a member, but never got around to it. That all changed today, when myself, Darrell & Monique bought our season passes for the upcoming season, due to start in August. We now have our own seats for all the home games, and preferential access to tickets for non-league games involving the club.

This will be the 4th season of the A-League, and it’s going from strength to strength. When the national side qualified for the 2006 World Cup, the country really woke up to football and the contrast with AFL & League was stark, neither of which have an international series (League does, but only a handful of countries play and Australia usually wins). The sport has managed to build on that foothold and average spectator numbers are rising every season. NRL, which I always thought was massive, turns out to be an ugly duckling, with the A-League already matching it in terms of average attendance. In fact, most of the NRL teams have dismal attendances, and the average is only as high as it is due to the Broncos and the Titans. Roll on next season and we can relegate them to third place!

At last week’s Congress, FIFA agreed to sign up to WADA’s drug testing protocols and English players are not happy about it.

Availability requires that sportsmen and women must “provide accurate, current location information”, requiring that for an hour of every day they are accountable for their movements. This has become a huge issue for 30 top English players, who are mobilising against what they consider would amount to house arrest for the prescribed hour.

Michael Beloff QC has provided counsel to the PPF over what grounds it might have to mount a legal challenge to Fifa’s new rules. Initially the players hope to negotiate with the international game’s ruling body over scrapping the pool, insisting that football is not a sport at risk of doping.

They are claiming there’s no risk of cheating in a sport where you can earn $250,000 per week! Are they serious?

Marion Jones has finally admitted what most people have suspected ever since the BALCO story was unearthed: she was on the juice.

Citing a letter Jones sent to close family and friends, which was “read to the Washington Post by a person who had been given a copy of it,” Jones plans to plead guilty on Friday in New York to two counts of lying to federal agents about her drug use and an unrelated financial matter.

The Post reported that in the letter, Jones said she took the steroid produced by the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO) known as “the clear” for two years beginning in 1999. Jones, 31, won five medals, including three gold, at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.