World Athletics: Caster Semenya tests 'show high testosterone levels'

Preliminary medical tests on Caster Semenya, the 18-year-old South African at the centre of a gender row, have recorded elevated levels of the male hormone testosterone, Telegraph Sport can reveal.

A source close to the investigation into the 800 metres gold medallist has confirmed that tests carried out before the start of the World Championships indicated that the runner had three times the normal female level of testosterone in her body.

Telegraph Sport can also reveal that the head coach of the South African team is Dr Ekkart Arbeit, the former East German coach who was accused by a female athlete of giving her so many anabolic steroids that she was forced to undergo a sex-change operation and live the rest of her life as a man.

Although it is unclear how closely Arbeit has been working with Semenya, news of his position will raise concerns with the International Association of Athletics Federations.

The analysis on Semenya’s testosterone levels was carried out in South Africa and it is understood this information contributed to the IAAF’s decision to request the South African federation carry out a detailed “gender verification” test on the athlete.

Arbeit, who was named as a key figure in the East German doping machine in a German parliamentary inquiry headed by Professor Werner Franke, has admitted his involvement in the drug programme and has expressed his regret for the part he played in East Germany’s tainted successes of the 1970s and 1980s.

But he has also insisted that, since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, he has had no involvement with performance-enhancing drugs and that his coaching methods are now clean.

Heidi Krieger, who underwent surgery in 1997 and now lives in Germany as Andreas Krieger, has always blamed Arbeit for the role he played in supervising her drug regime under East Germany’s state-sponsored doping programme.

Arbeit was, however, considered trustworthy enough to be invited by Frank Dick, a former head coach of British Athletics, to work with Denise Lewis, the 2000 heptathlon Olympic champion. Arbeit coached Lewis for several months in 2003 before they parted ways after the World Championships in Paris.

The row over whether Semenya is a woman or a man has become a cause célèbre in South Africa, where the country’s parliament is preparing to file a complaint with the United Nations Commissioner of Human Rights over the athlete’s treatment, saying the gender verification tests are a “gross and severe undermining of rights and privacy.”

Medical tests on the athlete are said to be ongoing, with the results not expected for several weeks.

On Sunday, Lamine Diack, the IAAF president, said he regretted the public row over the athlete and admitted that the affair could have been treated with more sensitivity.

“It should not even have become an issue if the confidentiality had been respected,” said Diack.

“There was a leak of confidentiality at some point and this lead to some insensitive reactions.”