As a teenager at backwater athletics meetings, Caster Semenya would be taken into the toilets and made to pull down her pants before being allowed to run in the girls’ race. Later she submitted to uneasy photoshoots, her muscular frame clad in short skirts and high heels, to somehow “prove” she was a woman. Yet still she remains a conundrum, an anomaly, a prodded and poked specimen the world struggles to categorise.

The CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport) ruling on her case this week is a mess. It means that her crushing win in Doha last night may be the last 800m she runs, since she appears unwilling to reduce her testosterone level (and with it her speed), though she could shift to longer