The Paralympic Games’ first transgender athlete has defended her appearance in Paris after competing amid a maelstrom of controversy in the French capital.
Valentina Petrillo represented Italy in the women’s T12 200m and 400m sprint races for partially sighted athletes after undergroing hormone therapy and beginning her transition in 2019.
The 50-year-old was born with Stargardt disease, a degenerative eye condition which has no cure, but allows her to participate in the race without a guide.
Petrillo failed to make the finals for either of her events, finishing off-pace in the semi-finals, but her participation aroused international interest from commenters online who believe that she should not have competed in the women’s races.
Harry Potter author JK Rowling dubbed Petrillo an ‘out-and-out cheat’ for taking part in the races – despite her total testosterone level being below the required 10 nanomoles per litre of blood since 12 months before her first competition as a woman.
But in her first English-language interview in the wake of the Games, Petrillo was keen to stress that criticism against her inclusion in the tournament was pure ‘transphobia’ and denied that it would lead to an uptick in competitors denying biological women the chance to compete at the highest level.
‘Since 2015, when the IOC opened the Olympics to transgender people, there has only been one person who competed, Laurel Hubbard,’ Petrillo told The Times, citing a weightlifter from New Zealand who took part in the 2020 Tokyo Games.
‘And there has only been one (openly transgender) person that has participated at the Paralympics, me.
‘People said (lots of men) would compete as women just so they could win, but that has not happened at all,’ Petrillo added. ‘It is just transphobia.’
Hubbard’s inclusion as part of New Zealand’s delegation in Japan three years ago at the time aroused similar controversy, but like Petrillo, the weightlifter failed to make progress in the competition.
The then-43-year-old – who was the fourth-oldest competitor to compete at the Games – finished last in her group after three failed snatch lifts.
Petrillo also had a word for JK Rowling, who previously waded in to call for the expulsion of Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting – two Olympic boxers who were alleged to have ‘failed gender eligibility tests’ by the unafiliated IBA.
‘JK Rowling is only concerned about the fact that I use the female toilet, but she doesn’t know anything about me,’ Petrillo continued.
The athlete’s comments came after Petrillo had previously responded to the criticism trackside, telling reporters that she has ‘never read Harry Potter’.
Petrillo shares a son, Lorenzo, with her ex-wife Elena and previously won 11 national titles in three years while competing in men’s competitions.
Ahead of the competition, Petrillo shared that her taking part in the Games was the fulfilment of a dream ‘since (she) was a little girl’, but insisted that she was tempering her expectations.
‘It is better to be a slow, happy woman than a fast, unhappy man,’ she added.
