A 49 year-old male athlete who identifies as a “woman” took home bronze in the women’s 200m final at the Para Athletics World Championship today in Paris. Valentina Petrillo competed in the women’s 200m in the T12 visual impairments category at the Para Athletics World Championships where he managed to qualify for the final race after taking second place in the semifinals.
Petrillo, born Fabrizio, was competing against Cuba’s Omara Durand, Venezuela’s Alejandra Perez Lopez, and Germany’s Katrin Mueller-Rottgardt. Amongst the competitors, only Petrillo was running without an athletic guide — a runner intended to assist the visually impaired athletes safely make their way through the course.
While Petrillo initially placed 4th, Mueller-Rottgardt was ultimately disqualified from the race for a rule infraction, resulting in Petrillo being bumped up to bronze.
Petrillo had qualified for the final competitions after he took the bronze in the 400m race last week, which was also in the visual impairments category. The win resulted in Morocco’s Fatima Ezzahra El Idrissi losing her opportunity to compete.
According to the World Para Athletics Championships guidance on participation, “an athlete shall be eligible to compete in women’s competition if she is recognized as female by law.” But their policy book goes on to note that it will “deal with any cases involving transgender athletes in accordance with the [International Olympic Committee’s] transgender guidelines.”
Speaking to Reduxx, Peter Eriksson slammed World Para Athletics for their decision to allow Petrillo to compete. Eriksson is the former head coach for Team Canada and Team Great Britain, and came forward earlier this year to reveal that he had been threatened into silence after three biological males taken home medals at the 2018 Olympic Games.
Eriksson argued that World Para Athletics was needlessly deferring to the IOC, explaining that they have the ability to set their own guidelines and could have barred trans-identified males from participating in women’s categories. Eriksson had previously labeled the policy a “cop out,” and said the IOC transgender guidelines that World Para Athletics are referring to “don’t exist” at all.
“Once again, Petrillo robbed women of their rights to have a fair competition,” Eriksson said.
“It is frustrating to see that the International Paralympic Committee does not support women in sport. They let a cheating man into the women’s category,” he continued, adding that Petrillo’s participation in the women’s final race had been a “shame” for the competition.
As previously reported by Reduxx, Petrillo currently holds 8 women’s running championship titles, but failed to earn even one while competing as a male. Petrillo first changed his name to Valentina and began taking estrogen in 2019. The following year, he began competing against female athletes and has since broken multiple Italian women’s running records.
Petrillo has been diagnosed with Stargardt disease, a disorder of the eye that causes retinal degeneration over time. Due to this visual impairment, he has been permitted to compete in both matches designated for women with disabilities, as well as those which are not.
A number of female athletes and professional experts have been highlighting concerns about Petrillo’s participation in the women’s category. At the Master’s Athletics Championships in Arezzo in October 2020, Petrillo outpaced Sanulli and Denise Neumann, both of whom had previously won world and European Masters titles and have been regarded as the best in their events.
The athletes took the podium with Petrillo at the time to avoid becoming embroiled in controversy, but later stated that they felt that Petrillo had an unfair advantage.
“I didn’t feel like I competed as an equal. It was my race, my goal for the season. I had been preparing it for a long time and I wanted to win,” Sanulli said at the time.
Sanulli and Neumann were among more than 30 female Master athletes who signed a petition in 2021 opposing men being permitted to identify into women’s sports.
The women were represented by Italian lawyer and athletics champion Mariuccia Fausta Quilleri, who claimed that the admission of male athletes in women’s competitions constitutes a violation of Article 1 of the Code of Equal Opportunities between Men and Women.
The petition was sent to the president of the Italian Athletics Federation, Stefano Mei, the Minister for Equal Opportunities, Elena Bonetti, and the undersecretary of state for sport, Valentina Vezzali. According to women’s rights group RadFem Italia, their efforts were not acknowledged by the government officials.
In February, RadFem Italia again contacted government officials to ensure that Petrillo would not be granted access to the women’s locker rooms. In response, Petrillo was provided with a designated changing room reserved especially for him at the Italian Masters Championships the following month in Ancona.
On March 16, Petrillo angrily lashed out in a Facebook post wherein he equated criticism of his presence in women’s sports to Nazism, telling detractors they were “on the same level as Hitler,” and comparing sex-based sports categories to a 1936 ban on Jewish athletes.
Upset at being denied the use of the women’s locker room, Petrillo wrote, “In Ancona, you made me have a terrible time, it is not fair… you’ve relegated me to a ‘dedicated’ locker room,” a situation which he claimed was similar to the segregation of those called appestati, or sufferers of a plague.
Speaking about his history with the BBC in June 2021, Petrillo said: “Until four years ago, if you’d talked to Fabrizio (the name Petrillo was given at birth), Fabrizio would have given you the idea he was sexist. He was a tough guy who’d speak dismissively of women and then be a woman in his private space.”
Petrillo has stated that he used to “try on his mother’s clothes” when he was younger, a behavior that until recently was considered a symptom of a sexual disorder known as transvestic fetishism. He has also said that prior to declaring a transgender identity, Petrillo would steal his wife’s clothing. While describing a memory of “touching” his mother’s skirt for the first time, Petrillo said, “It was an incredible emotion. It was like touching heaven with your finger tip.”
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