Caster Semenya and April Hutchinson are on opposite sides of sports' gender omerta

Canadian sports federations making a habit of threatening women athletes and their coaches over gender ideology

After winning five major championships and several landmark rulings, Caster Semenya is doing everything possible to ensure that history is written by the victor. Semenya's gratuitous and dishonest jab at the two fastest women in the 2016 Summer Olympic Games 800 meter final speaks to some of the help she's had along the way in maintaining a monopoly on the narrative.

Speaking on BBC's Woman's Hour podcast, Semenya said, "If you look into 2016 and now, the very same women who are crying... Lynsey Sharp, Melissa Bishop have been complaining about that, I'm specifically going to call those names."

Bishop and Sharp were fourth and sixth, respectively, behind Semenya, Francine Niyonsaba and Margaret Wambui. All three medal winners are athletes with differences of sexual development (DSD), that is, biologically male while displaying physiological characteristics that are typically unique to either males or females.

Hence, Bishop and Sharp were the fastest women in that race.

Immediately after the race, Sharp said "I have tried to avoid the issue all year.... The public can see how difficult it is with the change of rule but all we can do is give it our best." For that, Sharp received international media criticism and death threats to her and her family.

Melissa Bishop has only ever spoken about Semenya and the 2016 final when asked specifically. Under repeated questioning on the topic in a 2017 interview, Bishop made her most direct statements: "She’s another competitor on the line with me. And I don’t look at her any other way... I can’t change what’s happening. Caster can’t change what’s happening. This is so far out of our control that I can’t sit here and worry about it."

What Bishop didn't know until much more recently was how her own sporting federation protected the story and sentiment around Semenya.

Peter Eriksson was the head coach for Athletics Canada from 2013-2017. His Olympic coaching career started in 1980, so he was familiar with all the routines and restrictions. "When you go to the Olympic Games, you really sign your life away in order to be on the team. They have these confidentiality things that you have to follow... You can't just say whatever you want to say. You're basically given this 'shut up' document, and if you don't sign it, you don't go."

But until 2016, no one had ever personally told him to shut up, or else.

"When the 800 final was over, the lawyer for the Canadian Olympic Committee called me and said, 'You say one thing about this, I'm going to make sure you're banned for life in all sports.'"

Seven years later, Semenya is back in the news and Canadian sports federations are doing the exact same thing.

The same day the BBC published their podcast with Semenya, Canadian powerlifter April Hutchinson revealed that the Canadian Powerlifting Union (CPU) had suspended her for two years for "multiple violations of both the Code of Conduct and the Social Media Policy," as "there is sufficient evidence for Major Infraction as a result of repeating offences, including prior warning."

Hutchinson has been an increasingly prominent athlete activist for keeping men out of women's sports over the last year. Her efforts contributed to the International Powerlifting Federation tightening its rules on trans-identifying men entering women's competitions. However, the CPU has maintained a "gender self-id" policy, putting them at odds with both their membership and their global governing body. This jeopardizes Canadian athletes' opportunities to compete in international events.

"Someone had to pay the price for the IPF forcing CPU to be more female-friendly," Hutchinson tweeted.

The threat to Hutchinson's competitive career is an easy rejoinder to the question: "Why don't more female athletes speak up?" We know who Hutchinson, Riley Gaines, Taylor Silverman and a few others are because they are so few. The intended audience for the public vitriol and institutional power directed at these specific female athletes is all female athletes.

Peter Eriksson was an audience of one for the threat he received in Rio 2016. Now that he's retired and speaking freely, he's seeing the other side of the omerta. The media's lack of interest makes "shut up or else" almost irrelevant.

"I spoke up a long time ago, after I quit being a head coach. This [was] not the first time I spoke up, but nobody wrote about it before," he said, referring to an interview he gave to Reduxx in April.

Eriksson knows as well as anyone how much Bishop lost by not being on the podium in Rio de Janeiro, let alone winning the gold medal.

"She was a Nike athlete at the time, and she would have made millions." Compared to other Canadian athletes who earned significant bonuses from their sponsors for winning medals, Eriksson recalls "Melissa was higher up in status because of her performance and she was consistently improving the whole time. Plus, she has a great personality, which would have helped, too."

She may even have landed a book deal.

But the idea that Melissa Bishop would go around complaining about Caster Semenya or anything else is absurd on its face to Eriksson. "Melissa, to this day, hasn't said anything to me except in an email after this came out... She's a mother with two small kids. She's a very private person. I don't think we're going to see her talk."

Unlike Caster Semenya, who is taking full advantage of the media's sympathy to speak almost uncontested about her personal and athletic experiences. But like a lawyer conducting direct examination, by needlessly dragging Melissa Bishop, Lynsey Sharp and the 2016 Olympics into the conversation, Semenya is opening the door for the "losers" to take an overdue turn at writing history.

George M. Perry is a sports performance coach, sports businessman and writer (not always in that order).

Photo credit: Rodrigo Soldon Souza / Flickr, under CC BY ND-2.0.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Lynsey Sharp finished fifth in the 2016 Olympics 800m final.