The Race to Be Myself by Caster Semenya

Author:Caster Semenya
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Chapter 14

YOU MAGAZINE

AFTER THE CELEBRATIONS IN MY VILLAGE WERE over, I returned to the University of Pretoria. All I wanted was to go back to my room and see Violet. I missed my family, but Pretoria had become my home, my own space. I was done with celebrations.

Toby Sutcliffe, the acting director of sport and CEO of the university’s High Performance Centre, met me as soon as I arrived at school. I’d become very close with him. I still call him “dad” to this day. He always talked to me in the way I preferred—directly. No beating around the bush. No pushing around the corner. He had a gentle but firm demeanor, someone you knew you could depend on.

“Caster, we’ve decided you’ll have to move out of the regular residential sports houses and into the HPC. It’s the only way to keep the media away from you. They are everywhere and there’s not much we can do to stop them,” he said.

And he was right. Journalists and cameras were everywhere. Large groups of them at the gate of the school, others hanging off the fence that enclosed the school’s track. Some even tried posing as students and faculty. Every one of them hoping to get a look at me and hopefully get me to talk. I wouldn’t be able to rest if I stayed outside the school grounds. I’d be safer at the High Performance Centre, which was located inside the grounds with its own restaurant, offices, and workout facility. This was the place elite athletes from all over the world stayed when they trained in Pretoria. For anyone to get in there, they’d have to go through at least three different reception and security stations. I have many reasons to be grateful to Toby, and his instinct to protect me was one of those. He knew I needed to be in a quiet place, that I needed to be inside of my own mind to process what was happening.

Toby introduced me to a guy named David who worked in guest relations at the university. David was assigned to bring me whatever I needed and to keep everyone away from me. He was to stay by my side from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep. I felt like I could trust him almost immediately.

While I was getting settled into my room at the HPC, the media storm continued to rage. Leonard Chuene, president of ASA, had stepped down as a council member on the IAAF while we were in Berlin, in protest of the IAAF’s initial leak to the media. It hadn’t yet come out I had been gender tested in South Africa first, with his approval. That all would come out soon enough. It didn’t matter to me. What mattered was that I was able to run in Berlin and win the gold medal. And now, all I wanted to do was go back and run. I wanted to show the world I did not become a champion by mistake.

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