Johannesburg - Gideon Sam, the president of South Africas Olympic governing body SASCOC, has congratulated 800m sensation Caster Semenya on her "fabulous gold medal at the IAAF World Track and Field Championships in Berlin".

GALLERY: Caster Semenya

VIDEO: Caster Semenya interviewed

The 18-year-old from Limpopo became the countrys first medallist at the Berlin World Championships when she won in a time of 1min 55.45sec.

"This is a truly remarkable achievement and testimony to both her mental and physical strength," Sam said after watching the final live on television.

"What has made the performance so much more remarkable is that she had to deal with the distraction of media allegations around her gender on the day of the race," Sam added.

"Caster has unbelievable talent and an athlete we earmarked for big things.

"We included her in the top tier of the Opex Elite Road to London program as we believe she has both the potential and the desire to win a gold medal at the 2012 Olympics in London."

On this issue of reports which suggested that Semenya was facing laboratory testing about her gender, after speculation that she "looked like a man", Sam added: "We have every faith in Athletics South Africa and the team they selected to attend the World Championships in Berlin.

"We are proud of the fact we send `clean teams to global events and we would take strong action against a federation if this didn't prove to be the case.

"We condemn the way she was linked with such media speculation and allegation, especially on a day she ran in the final of her first major world event. Its the biggest day of her life," Sam added.

"Now we hope Khotso Mokoena can add to his Olympic silver medal when he takes to the mens long jump, but for now we join in the rest of the country in saluting and acknowleding the emerging force in womens world athletics that is Caster Semenya," Sam concluded.