I'M DOING GREAT!

A new book, a fulfilling career and two little ones to keep her busy – life is good for Caster Semenya

- NOKUTHULA ZWANE-EJIKE

HER outfit is all business – black pants, white shirt, smart jacket, shiny brogues. It’s Mokgadi Caster Semenya as the world has come to know her: no fuss, no-nonsense, confident, and cool.

The Caster who meets us today is also quick to laugh and eager to talk, a woman who’s been through so much but is content with where she is in the world.

She may have been banned from competing in the races she dominated for so long but she’s in a good space – happily married, a devoted mother, an athlete determined to give back to the sport that’s made her so successful.

But the reason she’s here today isn’t because of athletics – it’s because her eagerly anticipated memoir, The Race to Be Myself, is about to be released.

She’s excited about the book, the 32-year-old running sensation says, chatting to us at Kream restaurant in Brooklyn, not far from the University of Pretoria, where she and her wife, Violet Raseboya, coach aspiring young athletes.

 “Sport has always been my life,” she says. 

And sport dominates her memoir, tracing her life from her childhood in Ga-Masehlong village in Limpopo through to her trailblazing battle to compete on her own terms.

There’s also a chapter that unpacks her decision to do a photoshoot with YOU in 2009 when she’d just started making waves internationally.

The images of Caster – in metallic tights, shimmering tops, dresses and stilettos, her cornrows covered by a curly wig and her face in full makeup – caused a stir.

Critics claimed she’d been coerced into presenting an inauthentic feminized version of herself but Caster says that’s far from the truth.