GENDER ROW ATHLETE 'HAS MALE HORMONE' 'High' levels in tests on Semenya.

Byline: ANDREW GREGORY

GENDER row athlete Caster Semenya had three times the normal female level of testosterone in her body, reports claimed yesterday.

Tests carried out before the start of the World Athletics Championships proved the 800m gold medallist had very high levels of the male hormone, according to sources close to the investigation.

It is believed this information led to the IAAF's decision to ask the South African athletics body to carry out a detailed "gender verification" test on the athlete.

Semenya returns home to South Africa today and the country's parliament is preparing to file a complaint with the United Nations Commissioner of Human Rights over the athlete's treatment.

It said 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.

IAAF president Lamine Diack said he regretted the public row over the athlete and admitted the affair could have been treated more sensitively.

He said: "It should not even have become an issue if the confidentiality had been respected. There was a leak of confidentiality at some point and this led to some insensitive reactions."

It also emerged yesterday that the head coach of the South African national team, Dr Ekkart Arbeit, has a highly controversial history.

Arbeit was accused by East German shot-putter Heidi Krieger of giving her so many anabolic steroids she was forced to undergo a sex-change op.

Arbeit, named as a key figure in the East German doping machine in a German parliamentary inquiry, 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 training methods are now clean.

Arbeit was 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 company after the World Athletics Championships in Paris.

It is unclear how closely Arbeit worked with Semenya.

Testosterone

On average, an adult human male produces about 40 to 60 times more testosterone than an adult human female, but female behaviour is affected more by the hormone

CAPTION(S):

CONTROVERSY South African 800m world champion