On Thursday night on the Para Athletics World Championships in Paris, Italian sprinter Valentina Petrillo made historical past as the primary transgender athlete to win a medal at a global Para championship. Petrillo secured the bronze within the ladies’s T12 400m ultimate, ending in 58.42 seconds. (The T12 class is for athletes with a visible impairment.)
Omara Durand of Cuba clinched gold with a time of 52.82 seconds, and Alejandra Perez Lopez of Colombia took silver in 57.88 seconds. Regardless of being 18 years older than her rivals, Petrillo beat Morocco’s Fatima El-Idrissi by a second and a half to assert the bronze. She can also be set to take part within the ladies’s T12 200m occasion.
Excellent sync and a gold 🥇!
La reina de Cuba 🇨🇺 and her information Yuniol Kindelan get their fourth consecutive world title within the ladies’s 400m T11 with 52.82.
🥈Alejandra PEREZ LOPEZ 🇻🇪
🥉Valentina PETRILLO 🇮🇹👀Watch it: https://t.co/4l9K6R7Vh9 pic.twitter.com/UIqkY0Yb2w
— #ParaAthletics #PARIS23 (@ParaAthletics) July 13, 2023
The 49-year-old Petrillo competes within the T12 classification as a consequence of her visible impairment brought on by Stargardt illness, which she was recognized with on the age of 14. After a protracted hiatus from athletics, Petrillo returned to the game on the age of 41 as a person, profitable 11 masters titles in males’s classes. Though Petrillo didn’t run with a information, the 2 runners forward of her did.
Petrillo started her transition in 2017 and underwent hormone remedy in 2019. In 2021, she turned the primary transgender athlete to compete in a global Para competitors. The eligibility guidelines of World Para Athletics state that athletes can compete in ladies’s occasions if they’re acknowledged as feminine by legislation. Nonetheless, the Worldwide Olympic Committee’s tips on transgender participation in the end affect how circumstances are dealt with. Whereas World Athletics has positioned restrictions on transgender participation, the IOC has postpone making a call on particular person sports activities.
World Athletics bans transgender athletes from feminine class
The implications of those rulings haven’t but prolonged to Para occasions. Earlier this yr, organizers of the World Masters Indoor Championships issued a warning in opposition to potential protests concentrating on Petrillo, who in the end didn’t begin the ladies’s 45+ 400m occasion.
Petrillo, in a 2021 interview with the BBC, expressed her respect for and adherence to the foundations set by the IOC and World Athletics. She emphasised that her transition was not pushed by a want to win, however relatively for her personal private journey. “I don’t really feel like I’m stealing something from anybody,” Petrillo mentioned.
