The investigation was prompted recently after Semenya “burst onto the scene by posting a world leading time of 1 minute, 56.72 seconds at the African junior championships in Bambous, Mauritius.

Comments after the race from her beaten rivals emphasised the unpleasant situation in which she now finds herself. Russian Mariya Savinova, who came fifth, questioned Semenya’s gender while Italy’s Elisa Piccione, who finished sixth, was more damning. “For me, she is not a woman,” she said.

Semenya had time to do no more than half a lap of honour before she was whisked out of the stadium.

“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,” her father, Jacob, told the tabloid newspaper Sowetan.

“For the first time South Africans have someone to be proud of and detractors are already shouting wolf. It is unfair. I wish they would leave my daughter alone.”

Maphuthi Sekgala, Semenya’s 80-year-old grandmother, said that the first-year sports science student at Pretoria University had long been teased about her boyish looks and for being the only girl in her local soccer team.

“[The controversy] doesn’t bother me that much because I know she’s a woman — I raised her myself,” she said.