Valentina Petrillo, the first trans athlete to compete in the Paralympic Games, has defended her participation in Paris and hit back after Harry Potter author JK Rowling called her a ‘cheat’ on social media.
Petrillo represented Italy in the women’s T12 200m and 400m sprint events for partially sighted athletes after undergoing hormone therapy and starting her transition in 2019. At 51 years old, she was born with Stargardt disease, a degenerative eye condition that has no cure, which enables her to compete in the race without a guide.
Using X, formerly Twitter, JK Rowling referred to Petrillo as an “out-and-out cheat” for her involvement, despite her testosterone levels being below the required 10 nanomoles per litre of blood for the past year prior to her first competition as a woman.
Responding to the Rowling post, Petrillo said: “I’m flattered that Rowling is talking about me. I’ve never even read Harry Potter. I’m told she wrote it but I didn’t read it. I was told that she wrote about a sport where there is no gender. So, I was expecting different behaviour from Rowling.”
In her first English-language interview following the Games, Petrillo emphasised that the criticism surrounding her participation was purely “transphobia.” She denied that it would result in an increase in competitors sidelining biological women from competing at the highest level.
“Since 2015, when the IOC allowed transgender people to compete in the Olympics, only one person has participated, Laurel Hubbard,” Petrillo said, referring to Laurel Hubbard, the trans New Zealand weightlifter who competed at Tokyo 2020.
“And I am the only openly transgender athlete to have competed in the Paralympics. People said (lots of men) would compete as women just so they could win, but that has not happened at all,” Petrillo added. “It is just transphobia.”
Before the competition, Petrillo shared that participating in the Games was the realisation of a dream she has had “since (she) was a little girl,” but she emphasised that she was managing her expectations. “It is better to be a slow, happy woman than a fast, unhappy man,” she added.
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