In this extract from her autobiography, the South African runner reveals what went on behind the scenes at the 2009 world championships in Berlin
he day before I was due to leave for the world championships in Berlin, I got an early morning phone call.South Africa had reached out and were sending someone to meet with me about “some tests”. They didn’t say what tests, and I assumed it was the usual kind.
Once he was finished, I got dressed and we spoke as two humans, not as doctor and patient. I could tell that he was a good man. “Caster … I am going to tell you the truth here. You are not built like most other women. I know you already know that. But these people are looking for a specific issue … a hormone in your blood called testosterone. Both men and women have this hormone, but you may have a higher level of it than the sports people allow for your gender.
It was as if some kind of bomb had exploded … and the fallout just kept getting bigger and bigger. I couldn’t escape it. My face and story was plastered across television screens and newspapers all over the world. It was as if the entirety of humanity had discovered some kind of alien that had been living amongst them. I remember thinking: “Now what? Am I going to run again? OK, so this explains why I haven’t gotten a period. All right.
I slept most of the day and stayed up all night staring at the walls. What I was dealing with in that moment as an 18-year-old girl was a specific kind of torment.
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