Previously banned from competing, both Caster Semenya and double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius have been cleared to run after high-profile legal battles and will showcase their ability at the Athletics World Championships. Both South Africans have something to prove next week in Daegu, South Korea, after fighting to be allowed to line up against the world's top runners. Semenya, who won the women's 800m at the Worlds in Berlin two years ago, hopes to show her victory as a relatively unknown teenager in 2009 was not down to any natural abnormality which gave her an unfair advantage over other women. Now 20, Semenya returns to the Worlds two years after a storm of controversy overshadowed her stunning debut in Berlin. In those two years, Semenya was forced out of competition for 11 months by the International Association of Athletics Federations following gender tests, threatened to take the governing body to court, was cleared to run by the IAAF without explanation and then missed the 2010 Commonwealth Games with a back injury. This year she has shown erratic form, fought off reports she was unfit, not training and had fallen out with her coach, and was again hampered by the niggling back problem in the weeks leading up to Daegu. Pistorius is attempting to prove he deserves a place against the leading able-bodied athletes after he ran a personal best last month in the 400m – on his controversial carbon-fiber blades – to qualify for his first worlds. The 24-year-old multiple Paralympic champion is not expected to threaten the world's best 400-meter athletes, but he said just running at the Worlds is a dream come true. He took his case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and won the right in 2008 to be allowed to run in able-bodied events on his blades after he was initially banned by the IAAF. Pistorius finally achieved the qualifying mark with a personal best of 45.07 seconds in July on his last attempt. He was confirmed in South Africa's team as its only athlete in the 400m to make history as the first amputee runner to compete at the able-bodied worlds.
