The European Court for Human Rights ruled in favour of Olympic runner Caster Semenya on Tuesday, saying courts in Switzerland should give her a new chance to fight a requirement that female athletes with high natural testosterone take drugs to lower it.

In 2019, Caster Semenya lost a case at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), and then went along the process of appeals, all of which she had lost until now.

In the ruling, the court says "that the applicant had not been afforded sufficient institutional and procedural safeguards in Switzerland to allow her to have her complaints examined effectively, especially since her complaints concerned substantiated and credible claims of discrimination as a result of her increased testosterone (T) level caused by differences of sex development [DSD]."

To clarify, DSDs are conditions that affect how we develop typical male or female characteristics. Individuals with the DSDs relevant to sport typically have XY chromosomes and develop functioning testes, which produce testosterone.

For reasons related to various enzymes and subsequent biological processes, they can't use testosterone in the typical way, which leads to the development of atypical or female-typical genitalia.

At birth, these individuals are often identified as girls, despite having male testes and levels of testosterone, which is what leads to later-in-life challenges for sport's authorities.

Physiological issues versus legal rights

In 2019, the focus was very much on the physiological issues of the case, and whether the DSD policy that...