British athlete Lynsey Sharp competed in the women's 800m race yesterday. In the race Sharp ran her personal best and came sixth. In an interview with the BBC, she appeared to claim the winner of the race, South African athlete Caster Semenya, had an unfair advantage that allowed her to win.
Semenya, the winner of the woman's 800m, has had her sex tested (also known as gender verification) in the past due to her high testosterone level. A recent rule change has meant that women with naturally high levels of testosterone do not need to take hormone-suppressing drugs in order to be eligible to compete, and a reporter from the BBC asked Sharp about it.
Sobbing, Sharp said: "I've tried to avoid this all year. You can see how emotional it was between me, Melissa [Bishop], and Joanne [Fenn] at the end. We know how each other feel.
"it's pretty much out of our control. We are very much relying on the people at the top to sort it out. I think the public can see as well how difficult it is with the change of rule."
Despite coming sixth, Sharp said: "We're not far away. You can feel how close it is and that's encouraging. All I can do it work hard over the winter and come back even stronger and give it our best every year."
After her interview Sharp posted a statement on Twitter on Sunday in which she said "I have tremendous amount of respect for Caster."
She wrote: "Media and politics should not distract from her performance. When asked on live TV, I felt I gave an honest and diplomatic response. I refused to answer questions from any other media on the topic. As you can imagine, it's frustrating to finish a race to be asked about your competitors performance."