A new Olympics brings the same controversy for Caster Semenya

She will run her first heat at 16:02 South African time on Wednesday starting in lane four.

The 25-year-old is the overwhelming favourite to add an Olympic gold in Rio to the silver she won in London four years ago, with a 2016 time that is almost a second faster than her closest rivals.

Semenya has no womb or ovaries – but, and because, of a chromosomal abnormality, she has internal testes. “So we are not going to worry about times at the moment”.

Semenya’s determination to keep competing has also provoked discussions about exactly whose rights are being trampled here: Semenya’s?

And she said: “Going into this having run 1:57 already helps”. She just runs, like the wind.

If you, like many others, are not near a TV, you can catch the race online below. Some feel Semenya may seek to win outside a world record, as she will invite less controversy that way.

Semenya won her heat in 1.59.31 and she said it was harder than she made it appear.

Semenya has been thrust ever since into the center of some wide ranging, highly invasive, often heated debates about fairness, stereotyping, the concept of gender identity as a nuanced rather than binary concept, and the shifting science about how much testosterone levels really affect athletic performance in women.

Semenya, she added, will “definitely win against us, even without using her full strength”.

Ex-British star Paula Radcliffe said her inclusion might encourage other countries to seek out female competitors with high testosterone levels to compete.

However those rules are successfully challenged by another athlete, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport suspends the ruling until July 2017.

Semenya, the 2009 world champion and 2012 Olympic silver medallist, is believed to be intersex and, as a result, receives advantage from extra testosterone produced naturally by her body.

So that is the backdrop under which Semenya competes: athletics authorities remain uncertain what to do with her some seven years after the issue of hyperandrogenism first surfaced, while some of her peers doubt her eligibility.

On the fast track at the Olympic Stadium the sky is the limit for her. She has worked hard to get here. “I just tried to hang on and tried to feel my body first so I was comfortable”. Immediately, her times began to improve.

But the IAAF also ruled that testosterone had to be within certain acceptable levels in a female competitor, and it has always been believed that Semenya took drugs that inhibited her ability to produce testosterone so she could meet the IAAF guidelines.

At one point she was told she had to take medication to reduce her testosterone level.

While sixth-place runner, Italy’s Elisa Cusma said: “These people should not run with us”.

Ireland’s Ciara Everard said: ‘From what I’ve seen, people are complaining about it, and perhaps the ruling needs to be revised, but it’s a very sensitive issue so needs to be dealt with very sensitively’.