BERN: South Africa’s Caster Semenya will not need to take testosterone-reducing medication to compete after a Swiss court temporarily suspended a new IAAF ruling.

The Olympic 800m champion, 28, last month lost her challenge to the Court of Arbitration for SportĀ  against the implementation of a restriction on testosterone levels in female runners. The ruling would have affected women competing from 400m to the mile.

Semenya then took her appeal down the permitted route to the Swiss Federal Supreme Court, citing the need to defend “fundamental human rights”.

Her legal representative Dr Dorothee Schramm said: “The court has granted welcome temporary protection to Caster Semenya. This is an important case that will have fundamental implications for the human rights of female athletes.”

Semenya said: “I hope following my appeal I will once again be able to run free. I am thankful to the Swiss judges for this decision.”

CAS had ruled that rules proposed by the IAAF – athletics’ world governing body – for athletes with differences of sexual development (DSD) were discriminatory, but concluded that the discrimination was “necessary, reasonable and proportionate” to protect “the integrity of female athletics”.

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