Valentina Petrillo fell in love with athletics as a seven-year-old while watching Italian sprinter Pietro Mennea win gold in the 200 metres at the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
“I said I wanted to be like him,” said Petrillo, a transgender woman who was raised as a boy. “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.”
Four decades later, at 50, Petrillo is about to finally realize her dream, but not at the Olympics. In two weeks, she is set to become the first transgender woman to compete at the Paralympics when she runs the 200 and 400 metres in the T12 classification for visually impaired athletes in Paris.
Petrillo, who was diagnosed as a teenager with Stargardt disease, a degenerative eye condition, considers herself lucky despite the challenges she’s faced. She’s 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 told The Associated Press in an interview at a track she trains on in a suburb of Bologna, where she lives.
“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 in Italian. “I got to 50 before it came trueª we all have the right to a second choice of life, a second chance.”
World Athletics last year banned transgender women from competing in the female category at international events if they transitioned after puberty. But its para counterpart, World Para Athletics, has not followed suit.
In a statement to AP, the WPA said 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 litre 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 litre of blood compared with less than 2 nmol/L for women.
“Any future changes to WPA’s rules position in this area will only be considered following appropriate consultation with teams and athletes and taking into consideration the rights and best interests of all those involved,” it said.
Grappling with level playing field
In a sport already grappling with how to create a level playing field among athletes with different levels of impairment, some of Petrillo’s competitors say she has an unfair advantage.
There was a backlash against Petrillo in Spain last year after she narrowly beat Spanish athlete Melani Berges to fourth place in the semifinal of the world championships, meaning that Berges didn’t qualify for the final and so missed out on the chance of making it to 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.”
The Spanish Paralympic Committee told AP that its stance had not changed since last year, when a spokesperson told Spanish media that “we respect the regulations of World Para Athletics, which currently allow trans women to compete, as is the case with Valentina Petrillo, but, looking to the future, we believe that it would be appropriate to move towards uniformity of criteria with the Olympic world in relation to this matter.”
German T12 sprinter Katrin Mueller-Rottgardt, who has also competed against Petrillo, expressed similar concerns to German tabloid Bild.
“Basically, everyone should live how they like in everyday life. But I find it difficult in professional sports. She lived and trained for a long time as a man, so there’s a possibility that physical conditions are different than for someone who comes into the world as a woman. So she could have advantages from it,” Mueller-Rottgardt said.
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 clearlyª that it doesn’t mean that because I was born a man that I will be stronger than a woman.”
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Study funded by IOC
Petrillo referred to a study funded by the IOC — and published in April in the British Journal of Sports Medicine — showing that transgender women were actually at a physical disadvantage compared to cisgender women across several areas, including lung function and lower body strength.
“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,” she said.
Petrillo grew up in the southern Italian city of Naples. She thought her running aspirations were over when she was diagnosed with Stargardt disease at 14.
She moved to Bologna, in northern Italy, to study computer science at the Institute for the Blind and lives on the outskirts of the city, where she works in the IT sector.
Sport continued to be part of her life — she played five-a-side soccer for visually impaired athletes — but it wasn’t until the age of 41 that Petrillo returned to the track, winning 11 national competitions in the male T12 category between 2015 and 2018.
She ran her first race as a female in 2020 and went on to finish fifth in the European Para Athletics Championships. She won bronze in the 200 and 400 metres at last year’s World Para Athletics Championships.
At the Paralympics, the finals of the women’s T12 400m and 200m will take place on Sept. 3 and 7 respectively, with the heats the previous day.
Petrillo will be cheered on by her ex-wife and 9-year-old son as well as her brother.
However, she says that she has already won her biggest challenge, no matter what happens when she takes to the track in the Stade de France.
“Unfortunately, we still live in a situation where transgender people are marginalized, who will never be able to change a document like I did, who will never be able to get what they deserve, the respect they deserve,” Petrillo said. “And therefore, my thoughts go to them, to those who have been less fortunate than me.”