World champion Caster Semenya loses again, finishing 9th in 800 at Italian meet

Caster Semenya finishes 9th in 800 at Italian meet

ROVERETO, Italy — World champion Caster Semenya lost for the second straight race, finishing ninth in an 800-meter run Tuesday in which she seemed at times to just be out for a jog.

This was her fifth race following an 11-month gender dispute. The South African finished in 2 minutes, 7.16 seconds at the Palio della Quercia meet in northern Italy.

“I ran the race, I ran slow. Nothing happened. It’s part of the game,” Semenya said. “Sometimes you need to go according to your body.”

Former Olympic champion Justin Gatlin was second in the 100, his best time since returning from a four-year doping ban. Gatlin’s time of 10.09 seconds was 0.03 seconds behind that of Jamaican winner Johan Blake.

Double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius was third in the 400 B race in 47.14 seconds, far off the 45.95 he needs to qualify for next year’s world championships. He attributed his performance to fatigue. He flew in from South Africa earlier in the day after attending his grandfather’s 93rd birthday.

Elisa Cusma Piccione of Italy, who questioned Semenya’s gender at last year’s worlds in Berlin, won the 800 in 2:00.37.

Semenya was third at the Diamond League meet in Brussels on Friday. In that race, she finished in 1:59.66 — the fastest time of her comeback. On Tuesday, she was nowhere close to victory.

Semenya was third to last after the first lap and never made a move to the front. Afterward, she walked over to Cusma Piccione to congratulate her.

“It was a nice gesture,” Cusma Piccione said. “I know she hasn’t trained much and it’s not easy to keep up your form. Maybe she’s tired.”

Cusma Piccione called Semenya “a man” when she lost to her at worlds.

“Maybe I used words that were a bit crude, but I wasn’t the only one to use those words if you look at what’s being said now,” the Italian said. “Maybe it was a bit excessive to have said that right away because you can never judge these things. But if she didn’t compete for nearly a year maybe there was something to that.”

Gatlin won after two false starts that disqualified Ryan Bailey of the United States and Fabio Cerutti of Italy.

“It was a good practice for me and I bettered my time as well,” Gatlin said. “I tweaked my quad just a little bit coming into home and had to slow a little bit but all in all it was a good race, going against good competitors.”

Gatlin said he hopes to go under 10 seconds at his next meet — in Padua on Friday.

“Every time I run I get faster, I get more comfortable with myself, I get more comfortable with my race, so I still think I pose some kind of a threat,” Gatlin said.

Gatlin won gold in the 100 at the 2004 Athens Olympics in 9.85, then tested positive in 2006 for excessive testosterone.

Regarding Semenya’s case, Gatlin said the rules need to be defined better.

“She’s a competitor like everyone else and if they say she can run in the gender that she’s running then so be it,” he said. “I’d tell her, ‘Don’t be scared. If you’re a champion be a champion.’”

Pistorius missed out on qualifying for South Africa’s Commonwealth Games team by 0.02 seconds when he set a personal-best of 46.02 in July.

“It just means I’m going to have to work harder in the future and find ways of training smarter and resting more,” he said.

Pistorius went through a long struggle with track and field’s ruling body to race against able-bodied athletes amid claims his prosthetic limbs gave him an unfair advantage.

That gives Pistorius a special perspective on Semenya’s case.

“I can understand her frustration,” he said, referring to his fellow South African. “She’s younger than I was when I went through what I went through. I think she’s a stronger person for going through it and there’s lots of good things to come from her in the future.”