Olympic medallist Caster Semenya (Gallo Images)
Roger Sedres/Gallo Images
Caster Semenya was back on the track on Wednesday evening where she won the 3 000m event at Athletics South Africa’s Athletics Grand Prix in Cape Town.
Semenya has had to switch to longer distances following a ruling that prevents her from running her favoured 800m event, finished in a time of 8:54.97, a personal best over the distance.
According to the World Track website, Semenya’s time is not far off the world’s leading time over the distance in 2022.
That was set in February by American Valeri Constien, who stopped the clock at 8:52.19.
Semenya was followed home by Aynslee van Graan with Kayla Jacobs claiming third.
The former Olympic champion, who broke nine minutes over the distance for the first time, said the race wasn’t easy.
“The run was a little bit tricky,” said Semenya to World Track after the event.
“Fortunately, before the start, the wind died down a bit and worked in our favour,” she added.
“It was a great race, [I’m] happy with the result. The target obviously was to break nine minutes, and we achieved the goal [so] now we’ll have to go back to the drawing board and work more on mileage.”
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