Semenya Issue: Playing race card is disgraceful - By Ben English, Sport Editor

RACE, sport and politics invariably make a dangerous cocktail in South Africa. Now you can add gender to the list.

These ingredients have collided spectacularly and tragically over the nation's latest world champion, Caster Semenya.

She is the ultimate victim. Her fate was sealed perhaps before the world championships began last month, when Athletics South Africa buried its head in the sand over Semenya's gender issue.

For political reasons, the South Africans have been economical with the truth over their handling of this case. The ASA has insisted it never tested Semenya before the world championships.

That line has been blown away by one of its senior coaches, who resigned last week claiming he was ashamed of the way he and the ASA dealt with Semenya.

Wilfred Daniels admitted Semenya had gender testing in Pretoria between August 4 and 7. Athletics officials lied to her, telling her the examinations were for potential doping violations.

The bottom line is that ASA, which is controlled by South Africa's ruling political party the ANC, desperately wanted a gold medal in Berlin. Semenya's amazing improvement this year indicated she would be the one to deliver.

And when her performance and striking physical appearance at the championships inevitably led to questions over her gender, South Africa reverted to its default response and played the race card.

Their OJ Simpson-like stance was simple: any questioning of Semenya's status is a race-based attack on the girl and the achievements of black South Africans.

It is a tried and true formula in sport and politics. Think Pakistan cricket in the Darrell Hair case or India and their threatened boycott over Harbhajan Singh's sanction following the Sydney Test in 2007.

It is the product of the ANC's sometimes clumsy attempts to re-balance more than a century of race crimes committed against blacks under the reviled apartheid regime that collapsed in 1994.

In the case of Semenya, the ANC's subterfuge in the name of race could lead to worldwide humiliation of her and the South African government.

This article courtesy Sydney Daily Telegraph.