The title of a recently released CNN article is "Women's world champion Semenya faces gender test". This sort of thing is exactly why Africa is being ravaged by sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS.

The first sentence is "South African teenager Caster Semenya won the women's 800 meters gold medal at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin just hours after the sport's governing body asked for the 18-year-old's gender to be verified". This is yet another hot button issue. This isn't the first time we've read something like this and it certainly won't be the last. Nevertheless these kinds of headlines are rare which is why they raise eyebrows when they do appear/surface.

According to International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) spokesman Nick Davies, "The gender verification test is an extremely complex procedure. In the case of this athlete, after her breakthrough at the African junior championships, THE RUMORS (and) THE GOSSIP were starting to build up". Rumors and gossip are rarely reliable, but they are evidence nonetheless.

As far as other results are concerned, Yusuf Asad Kamel won the men's 1500 meters while Deresse Mckennon won silver and Bernard Legat settled for bronze. Kamel seemed to be ecstatic after his win: "It's amazing to win a world title, just like my father. The only thing left for me to do (now) is beat his times and get to the front of my family". There seems to be a friendly rivalry going on between Yusuf Asad Kamel and his father.

Jamaica's Usain Bolt produced an "effortless" run to win in the men's 200 meter dash. Here's what he had to say: "I just try and get through and make it as easy as possible. I've been training for this for a long time now (perhaps ever since the end of the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing?) (and) I know what I have to do". Bolt seems like a very determined and confident young man...and he should be. Brigitte Foster-Hylton, another Jamaican, won the women's 100-meter hurdles, coming home in 12.51 seconds, the fastest time so far this season . Putting some icing on the cake, yet another Jamaican, Delloreen Ennis-London won bronze competing in the same event as Foster-Hylton.

Moving away from the track and onto the field now, German Robert Harting threw his final shot put 69.43 meters to claim the title. That was clearly the most dramatic event of that night. Pole Piotr Malachowski won silver with Estonia's Gert Cantor settling for bronze.

However, putting results and performance aside, the focus was clearly on Caster Semenya. In a Yahoo! article entitled "Athlete Semenya's family brush off gender controversy", but it isn't going away.

She (?: we have to write it like this because we still don't know whether this person is male or female), has been dubbed the "golden girl" by the local press.

According to her father Jacob Semenya, "She is my little girl.I raised her and I have never doubted her gender. She is a woman and I can repeat that a million times. For the first time, South Africans have something to be proud of and detractors are already crying wolf. It is unfair. I wish (that) they would leave my daughter alone". This is assertion #1.

According to Semenya's 80-year-old grandmother Maphuthi Sekgala, "(The controversy) doesn't bother me that much because I know (that) SHE'S a woman". How can Sekgala be so sure about this? What is she basing her statements on? "I raised HER myself". What does that have to do with anything?

"SHE called me (after the heats) and told me that they think SHE'S a man. What can I do when they call HER a man when SHE's really not a man? It's God who made HER look that way". OK, if that's what you think, you should just wait for the IAAF's investigation to run its course BECAUSE THERE IS NO EASY WAY TO SETTLE THIS DISPUTE.

According to Semenya's former high school principal, "I first realized that she was a girl in Grade 11". That's the junior year of high school. If Semenya is obviously and clearly a girl as HER father and grandmother claim, it shouldn't have been that hard and it shouldn't have taken that long to figure this out.

According to Michael Seme, Semenya's coach, "Then she has to explain the fact that she can't help that her voice is so gruff and that she really is a girl. The remarkable thing about Caster is that she remains completely calm and never loses her dignity when she is questioned about her gender". Well she has "remained completely calm" until now because this has turned into a major international incident. Also, the phrase "when she is questioned about her gender" is yet another interesting twist because it suggests that Semenya is often asked about her gender when this should be obvious for most other people.

"Then, Caster said 'Do you want me to pull down my pants so that you can see (my vagina)?'" OK, in almost every other case, this may be considered pornographic, lewd or otherwise inappropriate, but in this case, it seems to be necessary. "Those same people came to her later that day and said (that) they were extremely sorry". We will simply have to wait and see what the IAAF's ruling on Semenya is because people must be either male or female. The most likely outcome is that they will decide that this person is indeed female who happens to look like a boy and have a very gruff voice.