Valentina Petrillo dissolved in tears after failing to make a first Paralympic final but expressed no emotion for the female runners excluded by the astonishing decision to allow a 51-year-old biological male to race against women.
On an extraordinary day here in Paris, the father-of-two was condemned by author JK Rowling as an “out-and-proud cheat” for participating in a women’s event on the grandest global stage despite having raced until the age of 45 as a man.
Despite the chorus of condemnation, Petrillo depicted this Paralympic experience in the visually-impaired category of the women’s 400 metres as a triumph of inclusion, with World Para Athletics allowing this situation to materialise through their insistence that womanhood could be defined purely by legal or passport status. “It is not right that we suffer discrimination and prejudice simply because we exist,” the sprinter said. “Don’t be afraid. This is the thing that bothers me the most, the idea that people should be afraid of me. I don’t hurt anyone.”
Except Petrillo did hurt somebody. Her name was Lorraine Gomes de Aguiar, a 27-year-old Brazilian who had her left eyeball removed as a child due to a rare cancer of the retina. She lost out by a single place on a world championship final last summer due to Petrillo’s involvement. This time she was again relegated to the status of fastest loser, denied a potentially once-in-a-lifetime chance to qualify for a Paralympic semi-final by somebody identifying as a “trans dad”.
‘I don’t hurt anyone,’ Valentina Petrillo said today. But this is just not true.
Here is Lorraine Gomes de Aguiar of Brazil. She had her left eyeball removed as a child due to a rare cancer of the retina.
She has twice finished fastest loser due to presence of a biological male pic.twitter.com/humHLmB7q6
— Oliver Brown (@oliverbrown_tel) September 2, 2024
The injustice was savaged by Rowling, who wrote, with the heaviest sarcasm: “Why all the anger about the inspirational Petrillo? The cheat community has never had this kind of visibility! Out-and-proud cheats like Petrillo prove the era of cheat-shaming is over. What a role model. I say we give Lance Armstrong his medals back and move on.”
Petrillo, who cried at missing out on the final, would have been nowhere near this race if still in men’s track and field. Just look at the athlete’s 400m semi-final time: 57.58sec, a personal best and yet still over 3½ seconds adrift of the Paralympics’ minimum qualifying standard for males of 54.00. Quite simply, runners in their sixth decade are not supposed to be representing their countries at the pinnacle of para-sports. Even Petrillo’s competitors, while striving to remain polite, looked utterly bewildered by it all. Hagar Safarzadeh Ghahderijani, an Iranian less than half the Italian’s age, said after winning the semi-final that she had “no idea” she would be lining up alongside a biological man.
For a few moments, Petrillo was emotional in the aftermath, saying that she hoped her son would be “proud of his trans dad, not the dad that everyone dreams of”. “I hope he will always stand by me,” I hope that he loves me even if I am like this. I can’t help it if I’m like this, I’m sorry. Don’t treat trans people badly. We suffer. It’s not fair.”
The appeal to sentiment was unlikely to work given the degree of outrage this story has unleashed. The fury was far from confined to Rowling, with Kylie Grimes, Britain’s gold medal-winning wheelchair rugby player describing Petrillo’s presence in women’s Paralympics as “devastating”. “It’s not fair on any female,” she said.
Petrillo defiantly disregarded critical voices, arguing: “We are here finally. It’s a dream come true. It’s 2 September 2024, let’s sign this historical date in our diary. From today I don’t want to hear anything more about discrimination, prejudices against transgender people.
“There are lots of people dying only for being trans,” Petrillo said. “People are killed because they are trans, people commit suicide because they are trans. Or they lose their jobs, or they are not included in sport. But I made it. If I make it, everyone can make it.”
Towering over Yaqin Shen in the adjacent lane, Petrillo demolished the Chinese athlete in the heats but finished well adrift of Venezuela’s Alejandra Perez Lopez. Unrepentant, the Naples-born athlete, who next runs in the 200m on Friday, declared: “I am not going to stop here. I’ll just let this extraordinary spectacle power me.”
Remarkably, Petrillo acknowledged that if biologically female, this outlook might be very different. “I’ve asked myself questions,” the Naples-born runner said. “I said, “What if you, as a biological woman, saw Valentina on the track?” I think that question is legitimate. It’s normal. I am here, I have made myself available. We must ask ourselves questions, the world of sport must also question us. Certainly, the word inclusion must be at the forefront of the world of sport, because a solution must be found for everyone. Sport is beautiful like this. This is happiness, it is the repositioning of ourselves. It is our passion, what makes us alive and happy.”
But despite the acknowledgement of all the doubts, Petrillo still went through with this Paralympic debut regardless. It was as if only one person’s happiness mattered, rather than that of the athletes who stood to be deprived here and those who had already been left by the wayside. And that, in the eyes of a great many women, is quite inexcusably selfish.
