A transgender runner who won nearly a dozen men’s disabled titles before transitioning to female failed to qualify for the women’s 400-meter final at the Paralympic Games, but still has another chance for a medal.
Italian sprinter Valentina Petrillo finished Monday with a time of 57.58 in the women’s 400m semifinal in the T12 classification for visually impaired athletes, good enough for sixth place. The top four finishers advance to Tuesday’s final.
Defenders of single-sex women’s sports expressed relief at the outcome, but Petrillo isn’t done.
The 51-year-old runner, who transitioned to female at age 45 after fathering two children, is scheduled to compete Friday in the women’s 200-meter sprint at the Stade de France in Paris, keeping alive the uproar over male-born athletes in female sports that has dogged the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics.
“Petrillo fails to progress to final of T12 400m — good,” said Mara Yamauchi, a British marathoner who competed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, on X. “He runs again in the 200m on 6 Sept. Men do not belong in women’s sports under any circumstances!”
Even though Petrillo fell short, the U.K. Women’s Rights Network said earlier that a “woman has already lost a deserved place at the Paralympics because of the ego and shamelessness of this man.”
🚨BREAKING🚨
— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) September 2, 2024
Valentina Petrillo, a biological male who “identifies” as a woman, will not compete for Paralympic gold after failing to qualify in the Women’s T12 400m semi-finals.
Earlier today, Petrillo accused his critics of simply being “jealous” of him. https://t.co/178qZ6KbNM pic.twitter.com/x96bETY1W2
Others calling out Petrillo ahead of the Monday semifinal included British author J.K. Rowling, tennis great Martina Navratilova and British Olympic swimming silver medalist Sharron Davies.
“So we ban Lance Armstrong for taking drugs which will give him a small but important advantage over his male rivals because it’s cheating but we let 51 year old male Valentina Petrillo have a huge advantage with no issue at all against female athletes!” Davies said on X. “Why is this being allowed?”
The “Harry Potter” novelist accused Petrillo of being a “cheat.” Petrillo was deemed eligible to compete under Paralympics rules, which require male-born athletes to keep their testosterone in serum below 10 nmol/liter for 12 months before competition.
“Why all the anger about the inspirational Petrillo? The cheat community has never had this kind of visibility!” Rowling said on X. “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 was diagnosed as a teen with a degenerative eye condition called Stargardt disease, captured 11 men’s national competitions from 2015-18 in the male T12 category before transitioning to female.
At last year’s World Para Athletics Championships, Petrillo won bronze medals in the women’s 400m and 200m races.
Petrillo has defended competing in the women’s Paralympics, telling the Associated Press that undergoing testosterone-reduction treatment actually puts transgender athletes at a disadvantage versus their female competitors.
“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,” Petrillo said.
Critics argue that keeping testosterone below 10 nmol/L gives transgender athletes an unfair advantage, given that the testosterone range for adult women is under 2 nmol/L. Adult males have naturally occurring testosterone as high as 30 nmol/L.
Petrillo is believed to be one of the first, if not the first, openly transgender athletes in the Paralympics.
Petrillo called competing in the Paralympics a “dream that I had since I was a little girl,” prompting critics to argue that the runner was never a little girl.
The issue of male-born athletes in female sports erupted at the 2024 Paris Olympics when two athletes won women’s boxing gold medals in their weight classes despite being deemed ineligible last year by the International Boxing Association, which said test results showed they have “competitive advantages” over female boxers.
The two boxers — Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting — are not transgender, according to the International Olympic Committee, leading to speculation that they have a condition known as 46,XY Disorders of Sexual Development.
Those with 46,XY DSD are typically born with ambiguous genitalia but have male chromosomes and produce male-level testosterone after puberty.
The Paralympic Games run through Sept. 8.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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