A male powerlifter who identifies as a “woman” set a women’s national record at a championship in Brandon, Manitoba, yesterday. Anne Andres, 40, currently holds multiple records in the female division, including women’s deadlift and bench press, and has placed first in nine out of the eleven competitions he has participated in over the past four years.
Andres appeared at the Canadian Powerlifting Union’s 2023 Western Canadian Championship yesterday, which was held at Brandon University’s Healthy Living Centre. Andres participated in the Female Masters Unequipped category, and beat out Michelle Kymanick and SuJan Gil for the first place award.
According to advance results obtained by Reduxx, Andres total powerlifting score was over 200kg more than the top-performing female in the same class – 597.5kg versus SuJan Gil’s 387.5kg total. A “total” is the sum of the heaviest weight lifted for the squat, bench press, and deadlift.
Andres’ total would have placed him amongst the top-performing male powerlifters in the entire championship had he participated in the men’s category.
According to a source who was present at the championship, Andres set both a Canadian women’s national record and an unofficial women’s world powerlifting record.
Boasting of his success, Andres shared videos to his Instagram account of his participation where he can be seen competing against female athletes while wearing pink socks and donning blue-dyed hair.
“Today I did some lifting. Not just some lifting. I got to lift with friends from across Canada,” Andres wrote in one post. “Keep in mind I turned 40 a week ago so suddenly being master 1 is kind of hollow. That in mind, I got every masters [sic] record and two unofficial world masters records. I don’t care about records. I care about being there with my friends.”
The Western Canadian Championships was held under the umbrella of the Canadian Powerlifting Union (CPU), which announced a gender self-identification policy earlier this year. The policy, which garnered mass backlash from women’s rights advocates, explicitly allowed any males to participate in women’s competitions on the basis of self-declared “gender” alone.
In February, the CPU’s “Trans Inclusion Policy” was released, containing an explicit statement that the CPU supported allowing transgender powerlifters to participate in the sex category of their choosing based on a guidance from the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES).
“Based on this background and available evidence, the Expert Working Group felt that trans athletes should be able to participate in the gender with which they identify, regardless of whether or not they have undergone hormone therapy,” the document reads, deferring to the “inclusivity in sport” guidance from the CCES.
Just prior to the CPU’s announcement of a gender self-identification policy, Andres gained significant notoriety after sharing a video of himself appearing to mock female athletes, asking why female powerlifters were “so bad” at bench press.
In March, a powerlifting coach who has worked with Team Canada, self-identified as a woman in order to protest the admission of men into women’s sports. At the Heroes Classic Powerlifting Meet held in Lethbridge, Alberta, Avi Silverberg unofficially broke the Alberta women’s bench press record for the 84+ KG category.
Silverberg’s protest was perceived by many to be directly targeted at Andres, who was in attendance at the powerlifting meet and witnessed Silverberg’s demonstration.
Andres later responded to Silverberg’s demonstration in a video he shared to his Instagram account on March 26, stating that the professional coach had “malicious intent,” but that ultimately, the gesture was “nothing” and was “entirely ignored.”
“Everyone was happy that I was there. And it really struck me that maybe my participation isn’t necessarily fair – I mean, there’s science, whatever – but people welcome me because I’m actually nice to people,” he said.
Speaking to Reduxx on the results at the Western Canadian Championship, Linda Blade, founder of the International Consortium on Female Sport, condemned the CPU for allowing Andres to participate with female athletes.
“Since we became aware of Anne Andres’s unethical participation in CPU female powerlifting in January of 2023, we have written letters, helped affected athletes obtain legal representation, and worked very hard to convince CPU to align with its own international federation to ensure fairness for Canadian women,” Blade, who is a sport performance coach with a PhD in Kinesiology, said.
“The CPU insists on championing this unfairness and we condemn it wholeheartedly.”
EDITOR’S NOTE 08/14/23: A previous version of this article erroneously used pounds (lbs) instead of kilograms (kg).
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