From Semenya to Thomas: 5 sportspeople who changed the gender rules

The decision taken by World Athletics on Thursday to ban male-to-female transgender athletes from women's competition is likely to have a wider effect on global sports.

READ | Trans women banned from female athletics, Semenya's career hits another stumbling block

AFP Sport looks at five sportspeople who have previously found themselves at the heart of the gender debate.

Caster Semenya: hyperandrogenism

A double Olympic champion and triple world champion in the 800m, South Africa's Caster Semenya raised all manner of questions about her hyperandrogenism, which causes an elevated level of testosterone.

After a controversial victory at the 2009 world championships when she was just 18, the IAAF - as World Athletics was previously known - introduced rules two years later, for the first time, allowing hyperandrogenic athletes to compete on condition that they display androgen levels below those recorded for men.

But in 2018 the IAAF made it mandatory for athletes, via drug treatments, to lower their testosterone levels to under 5 nanomoles per litre of blood for six months in order to compete in international events from 400m to the mile.

The decision was badly received in South Africa where it was interpreted as a way to "slow down" Semenya who unsuccessfully challenged the ruling in court and was unable to defend her 800m title in the 2019 Doha world championships.

She did not make the qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics in the 200m and failed to reach the final of the 5000m at the world championships in Eugene.

Laurel Hubbard: Olympic pioneer

In August 2021, in Tokyo, New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, then 43 years old, made history by becoming the first openly transgender woman to take part in an Olympic event.

Hubbard met