Italy's Valentina Petrillo is set to become the first transgender woman to compete at the Paralympics. She will be running the 200 and 400 meters in the T12 classification for visually impaired athletes in Paris. Petrillo was diagnosed as a teenager with Stargardt disease, a degenerative eye condition.

The 50-year-old has lived most of her life as a man and only came out as transgender to her wife — with whom she has a son — in 2017 before beginning hormone therapy two years later. “Yes, I have problems with my vision, I'm partially sighted, I'm trans – and let's say that's not the best in our Italy, being trans – but I am a happy person,” she had told The Associated Press in an interview at a track she trains on in a suburb of Bologna, where she lives.

Petrillo says she fell in love with athletics as a 7-year-old while watching Italian sprinter Pietro Mennea win gold in the 200 meters at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. “I wanted to put on the blue (Italy) shirt, I wanted to go to the Olympics. But — and there was a but — I wanted to do it as a woman because I didn't feel like a man, I didn't feel like myself.”

Transgender women who transitioned after puberty were banned from participating in the female category at the international level by World Athletics last year. But its para counterpart, World Para Athletics (WPA), has not followed suit. “I began transitioning in 2019 and in 2020 I realized my dream, which was to race in the female category, to do the sport that I had always loved doing,” she said. “I got to 50 before it came true … we all have the right to a second choice of life, a second chance.”

‘I understand the concerns’

Petrillo's participation at the Paralympics comes in the wake of the Paris Olympics were there was a particularly vitriolic argument around Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, despite her being born a woman. The WPA said that transgender athletes in its women's competitions are required to declare their gender identity for sporting purposes is female and provide evidence that their testosterone levels have been below 10 nanomoles per liter of blood for at least 12 months prior to their first competition.

Testosterone is a natural hormone that increases the mass and strength of bone and muscle after puberty. The normal adult male range rises to up to about 30 nmol per liter of blood compared with less than 2 nmol/L for women.

Petrillo's participation in the event shows that she passed this test but this doesn't mean that her being in Paris is devoid of any backlash. There was some criticism around her participation at the world championships, where she beat Spanish athlete Melani Berges to fourth place in the semifinal and thus denied the latter a chance to reach the Paralympics. Berges called it an “injustice,” telling Spanish sports site Relevo that while she “accepts and respects” transgender people, “we are no longer talking about daily life, we are talking about sport, which requires strength, a physique. German T12 sprinter Katrin Mueller-Rottgardt has also raised concerns in German tabloid Bild.

Petrillo said she understands to some extent those who question whether she should be competing in the female category. “I have asked myself. But Valentina, if you were a biological woman and you saw a Valentina racing with you, what would you think?' And I responded to myself that I would also have some doubts,” she said. “But then through my experiences and what I learned I can state clearly … that it doesn't mean that because I was born a man that I will be stronger than a woman.”

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