RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — As Caster Semenya stood on the Olympic medal podium, the gold around her neck, the South African anthem playing, one was reminded of another opinion-changing person from her country: Nelson Mandela.
Semenya doesn't have the anti-apartheid leader's oratory gifts. But like the father of modern South Africa who died in 2013, she is teaching the world — not just sport, but the wider world that is moved by it — about tolerance, about courage and about judging people not by how they look, but by what they do, how they do it and how they conduct themselves.