Athletics gave her a good reason to relax and be free. In the spirit of Pietro Mennea: «I was 6 years old and I saw him win the 200 at the Moscow Olympics». Valentina Petrillo51 years old in October, the first transgender athlete to compete at the Paris Paralympics (from August 28th to September 8th) has chosen a slogan for herself: “Better to be a slow but happy woman than a fast but discontented man.”
Assigned male at birth, at 14 she left Naples. She then became visually impaired due to Stargardt syndrome. For many years, she has always practiced sprinting, speed. She has an infinite passion for athletics that she cultivates with a club in Bologna preferred to her hometown and reached when she was 20 to attend a specialized school for those with vision problems.
In 2006 he met Elena who became his wife 10 years later. His son Lorenzo was born: “nobody and nothing is more important in the world than him”. He has a good list of achievements with 11 Paralympic titles at Italian level where he also recorded national records in the 200 and 400 metresLast year, again in Paris, he won bronze at the World Championships, again in the 200 and 400 meters.
Hers, however, is a difficult story that began 6 years ago with her coming out and therefore with the path of affirmation of the female gender: “I was afraid that such an intimate confidence would not be understood but I could no longer escape from myself; since I was 4 years old I wore nail polish but on the outside I never gave signs of femininity”. The controversy over her participation destabilizes the eve of the Parisian games.
Last year the athlete already withdrew from the World Masters in Poland due to threats. “My presence is an important moment of reflection for everyone. It can also be helpful on the language front – he explained -. There is a correct way to speak with disabled people, with people from the LGBT world, with all people who are so to speak “different”. A clear, unequivocal position, especially towards those who use a vocabulary that is not always correct and demeaning towards transsexual people: “Often language leaves much to be desired, certain conventions are harmful to our lives, such as using the name of our previous life (‘dead name’). There is linguistic discrimination against trans and disabled people».
Her story is not related to that of the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, Olympic gold medalist in boxing in Paris, who is not a transgender person but intersex. Petrillo today has a female gender identity recognized by the Italian State without having changed the male sex assigned at birth. If the Maghreb boxer pushed the Italian Angela Carini to withdraw after 46 seconds from the start of the match, claiming that she had suffered a blow too strong from her opponent, Petrillo’s qualification for Paris 2024 was contested by a Spanish athlete who was then excluded because she came fourth behind the Italian at the World Championships.
Melani Bergés Gamez34, 90 percent visually impaired as a result of albinism, after missing out on the podium in the 200 by just 8 hundredths, protested, claiming that a transgender woman cannot compete with women, being physically advantaged. “I’m 1.70 meters tall and Valentina is taller than me by a whole head and more,” the Spanish woman told “El Mundo.” “I defend the rights of cisgender women (for whom gender identity coincides with the sex assigned at birth, ed.), but that doesn’t mean I hate trans. However, we cannot compete with genetically superior people.” After these statements, Gàmez was in turn threatened with death on the web.
The misunderstanding was quickly cleared up: World Athletics does not allow people on gender affirmation journeys (unless it occurred before puberty) to compete against women, but the International Paralympic Committee, which organizes the Paris Games, does.
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