AFP, Johannesburg :
South Africa’s Olympic medallists including track stars Wayde van Niekerk and Caster Semenya received a heroes welcome Tuesday when they arrived from the games in Brazil.
Hundreds of people gathered at Johannesburg’s main airport cheered for the team which received a total of 10 medals, with gold from Van Niekerk for his world record setting 400- metres race.
Semenya, the crowd’s favourite, got the biggest applause for her 800-metres victory, with chants “Caster, Caster”.
“It’s great to come home and receive such a welcome. I will always do my best,” she told journalists.
“I hope that in four year’s time there will be more people to fill the entire airport,” she said referring to the next Olympic games in Tokyo in 2020.
Semenya, 25, first shot to international stardom in 2009 when she won the 800-metres at the World Championships in Berlin.
The star athlete has been dogged by questions around her gender, with suggestion that her body produced higher levels of male hormones.
Her competitors had raised concern that the condition gave her an unfair advantage.
The country’s Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula told the crowd that the country was proud of Semenya, a university student who has become a national icon.
In Rio, South Africa equalled its record of 10 medals achieved in Antwerp in 1920 and Helsinki in 1954.
