Up to 35 he was a man and his name was Gavin. For the past eight years, his identity and gender have changed. Gavin became a woman. Her name is Laurel. She is a New Zealand athlete. His discipline is among the toughest, weightlifting. She’s tough, Laurel. Among the best in the world.
He won silver at the 2017 World Cup and last year, 2020, the World Cup in Rome in the heavyweight category. The pass for the Tokyo Games has earned it with merit.
She is ready for the challenge. He knows that his results will be talked about if he manages to perform at a level; but much more than its history. Because Laurel, whose surname is Hubbard, will be there first transgender athlete to compete in the Olympics.
And his presence will surely cause discussion. There are rules, the IOC, the International Olympic Committee has set them. One of them says that athletes in “gender transition”, they are defined as such, can compete in the female category without surgery. provided their testosterone level is kept below 10 nanomoles per liter for at least 12 months.
Laurel, when she was Gavin, didn’t practice weightlifting, or rather, she only did it for a short time, during her teens. It started in earnest after the gender change in 2012. Her path in professional sport begins at that point, amidst the poisons of her opponents, who attribute to her a physical strength deriving from her previous gender condition.
Like other athletes, Laurel has been hiring for years drugs to lower the level of testosterone. Today, in her class, Laurel Hubbard is regarded as one of the most accredited weightlifters around, a good name to spend on a medal in Tokyo.
A few years ago Laurel Hubbard revealed that “Maybe the world of sport is not yet ready for an athlete like me”. In 2018 she was already the first transgender to participate in Australia in the Commonwealth Games on Gold Coast in 2018. Now her participation in the Tokyo Games will inevitably rekindle the debate on the ethics of transgender sport.
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