David J. Phillip / AP

South Africa's Caster Semenya celebrates after winning the gold medal in the women's 800 meters at the World Championships in Berlin on Wednesday.

Davies added that Semenya has already undergone some of the necessary tests at specialist hospitals in South Africa and Berlin. He said some of the documents in Berlin on Semenya’s case were leaked.

Gender testing used to be mandatory for female athletes at the Olympics, but the screenings were dropped in 1999.

One reason for the change was not all women have standard female chromosomes. In addition, there are cases of people who have ambiguous genitalia or other congenital conditions.

The most common cause of sexual ambiguity is congenital adrenal hyperplasia, an endocrine disorder where the adrenal glands produce abnormally high levels of hormones.

Morris Gilbert, a media consultant for TuksSport, the University of Pretoria’s sports department, said the issue of Semenya’s gender has not been raised since the 18-year-old freshman began attending the school, where she studies sports science.

He attributed her recent success to hard work and rigorous training.

“She trains a lot,” Gilbert said. “If you go to the athletics track, you’re sure to find her there. I don’t think she had really good training before she came to the university. She’s from a very poor area.”

But Semenya’s former school headmaster said he thought for years that the student was a boy.

“She was always rough and played with the boys. She liked soccer and she wore pants to school. She never wore a dress. It was only in Grade 11 that I realized she’s a girl,” Eric Modiba, head of the Nthema Secondary School, told the Beeld newspaper.

Semenya’s family in the village of Fairlie, about 300 miles north of Johannesburg, said she was often teased about her boyish looks.

“That’s how God made her,” said Semenya’s cousin, Evelyn Sekgala. “We brought her up in a way that when people start making fun of her, she shouldn’t get upset.”

Semenya moved to Fairlie at about age 13 to help care for her grandmother.

Her cousin Evelyn, who also lives with the grandmother, remembers Semenya playing soccer with the village boys, before a teacher got her interested in running.

Evelyn said the family was pleased Semenya took up an interest in sports, and not in drinking and partying like other teenagers.

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“She was mainly interested in running,” Evelyn said. “She wanted to further her athletic dream.”

While Semenya’s case has attracted a flurry of attention, it’s not the first gender controversy in track and field history.

In 2006, the Asian Games 800 champion, Santhi Soundarajan of India, was stripped of her medal after failing a gender test. Perhaps the most famous case is that of Stella Walsh, also known as Stanislawa Walasiewicz, a Polish athlete who won gold in the 100 at the 1932 Olympics, and was later found to have had ambiguous genitalia.