But Semenya, 800m Olympic champion in London and Rio and a three-time world champion, is challenging the legality of the rules in a case which will be heard at the Court of Arbitration (CAS) in Lausanne from Monday. Led by South Africa's Sports Minister Tokozile Xasa, the government said the rules were "discriminatory" as it launched a campaign in support of hyperandrogenic athletes.
"These regulations appear to be specifically targeting Caster Semenya," the minister told a news conference. "It's a subtle racial incident that we are observing". "What's at stake here is far more than the right to participate in a sport. Women's bodies, their wellbeing, their ability to earn a livelihood, their very identity, their privacy and sense of safety and belonging in the world, are being questioned.
"This is a gross violation of internationally accepted standards of human rights law." The government launched a campaign dubbed NaturallySuperior in a bid to drum up international support, in a drive the country's sports ministry director Mokoditloa Meomi said was to fight the "unfair" IAAF regulations.
"She is being targeted because she is a woman, had she been a man we doubt that that would be the case," said Meomi. "In Caster we have a human face and a human victim." "The world once declared apartheid as a crime against human rights. We once more call people of the world to stand with us as we fight what we believe is a gross violation of human rights," said Xasa.
She called on individuals and organisations "intolerant of discrimination" to add their voices to a movement "that condemns these discriminatory IAAF regulations which in their nature seek to unfairly exclude other sections of society from competing in sport," she said.