Column: Semenya takes after Mandela in Rio

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — As Caster Semenya stood on the Olympic medal podium, the gold around her neck, the South African anthem playing, one was reminded of another opinion-changing person from her country:

Semenya doesn't have the anti-apartheid leader's oratory gifts.

[...] like the father of modern South Africa who died in 2013, she is teaching the world — not just sport, but the wider world that is moved by it — about tolerance, about courage and about judging people not by how they look, but by what they do, how they do it and how they conduct themselves.

Semenya's story shouldn't be any more complex than a celebration of the athleticism she displayed in winning the 800 meters at the Rio Games.

[...] a paragraph that could not even begin to do justice to the injustice, the questions, the whispers, the doubts, the finger-pointing, the name-calling and Byzantine cruelty that Semenya has had to wade through since she announced herself to the world by winning the 800-meter world title as an 18-year-old in 2009.

[...] in the belly of Rio's Olympic Stadium, sports instead got a new leader who preaches unity where, for too long in her case, there has been nothing but discord.

The International Association of Athletics Federations will be going back to the CAS in the next year to try to change its mind.

[...] Semenya has been through, the freedom she expressed on and off the Olympic track felt like a message to the world.

John Leicester is an international sports columnist for The Associated Press.

John Leicester is an international sports columnist for The Associated Press.