Double Olympic 800-meter champion Caster Semenya offered to show her vagina to athletics officials when she was 18 to prove she was female, the South African middle-distance runner said in an interview with HBO's Real Sports that aired on Tuesday.
Semenya, now 31, burst onto the scene in 2009 when she won the women's 800-meter world title by a stunning margin hours after the sport's world governing body said she would undergo gender verification tests.
"They thought I had a dick, probably," Semenya said in the interview. "I told them: 'It's fine. I'm a female, I don't care. If you want to see I'm a woman, I will show you my vagina. All right?'"
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