Italian sprinter Valentina Petrillo is set to make history as the first transgender athlete to compete in the Paralympic Games.
Petrillo, 50, will take part in the women’s 200m and 400m events in the T12 classification for visually-impaired athletes when the 2024 Paralympics kick off in Paris this month. As a teenager, Petrillo was diagnosed with Stargardt disease, a rare degenerative eye condition that attacks the small part of the retina.
Well into adulthood, Petrillo came out as trans to her wife — with whom she shares a son — in 2017. She began hormone treatment 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,” Petrillo told The Associated Press in a story published Friday, August 23. “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.”
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Petrillo added, “I got to 50 before it came true … we all have the right to a second choice of life, a second chance.”
World Athletics, which helps oversee track and field events at the Olympics, banned transgender women from competing in the female category at international events if they transitioned after puberty. However, World Para Athletics has not done the same.
Still, Petrillo has been met with some backlash about her inclusion in the women’s events — which she’s taken some time to consider herself.
“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.”
To bolster her case, Petrillo referred the AP to an April study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine that found trans women actually have a physical deficiency compared to cisgender women across many areas, including lung function and lower body strength.
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Petrillo said, “This means rather that I have a disadvantage, because apart from anything else, going through hormonal treatment means I am going against my body — so against the biology of my body — and that’s certainly something that’s not good for it.”
Despite all the noise, Petrillo is motivated to be a voice for a community that so often gets pushed into the shadows.
“Unfortunately, we still live in a situation where transgender people are marginalized, who will never be able to get what they deserve, the respect they deserve,” she said. “And therefore, my thoughts go to them, to those who have been less fortunate than me.”
The Paralympic Games Paris 2024 officially begin Wednesday, August 28, with heats for Petrillo’s two events taking place September 2 and 6.
