Athletics - Semenya cruises through 800m heats

By Mitch Phillips RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Hot favourite Caster Semenya qualified for the Olympic women's 800metres semi-finals with supreme ease on Wednesday and will no doubt be braced for another wave of discussions about her gender should she go on to take the gold medal on Saturday. The South African has dominated the event this season and there has even been speculation that she could take down Czech Jarmila Kratochvilova's 1983 record of 1 minute, 53.28 seconds - the longest standing athletics world record and widely considered to have been chemically enhanced. After winning the 2009 world title as a 19-year-old, tests by the sport's governing body are reported to have revealed that Semenya was hyperandrogenous, resulting in her body producing an abnormally high amount of testosterone which makes her more powerful than her rivals.
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