Valentina Petrillo, a pioneer for transgender athletes

Visually impaired Italian sprinter Valentina Petrillo has a special relationship with Paris. She cherishes the French capital for having won the bronze medals in the 200m and 400m in the T12 (visually impaired) category at the World Para Athletics Championships in July 2023, earning her first qualification for the Paralympic Games in both distances. She also loves it because “in this city, no one [la] stares insistently”.

The 50-year-old athlete will nevertheless be scrutinized when she wedges her size 44 and a half spikes, and her 1.82 meter for 78 kg, into the starting blocks of the purple track of the Stade de France in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis), for the first round of the 400 m, on September 2, becoming the first openly transgender athlete to participate in the Paralympic Games since their creation in 1960. A few days later, on September 6, she will take part in the 200 m.

Coming from a difficult neighborhood and a modest background in Naples, Valentina Petrillo lived until she was 45 under the name Fabrizio, prisoner of a male body that she “hated”. “I have felt like a woman since I was 5 years old, but as a teenager I resigned myself because I did not understand what was happening to me. I thought I was the only one in the world like that.”, she confided to the Mondeone week before the start of the event.

In 1980, her compatriot Pietro Mennea’s victory in the 200m at the Moscow Olympics captivated her. She vowed to one day wear the azzurro jersey to sprint at the Games, as a woman. Having been diagnosed with genetic macular degeneration (Stargardt’s disease) since the age of 14, she put her dream on hold.

She only really started athletics at the age of 20, in Bologna, where she studied computer science at an institute for the visually impaired, a city where she now lives and works remotely as a computer programmer. She plays blind football (the Paralympic version of five-a-side football) in the men’s national team. Then, from 2015 to 2018, she devoted herself to track and won eleven national titles in the men’s T12 category.

“A long process”

At the end of 2018, she came out by confessing to her wife – with whom she has a son who is now 9 years old – that she dresses as a woman whenever she can. Once the shock has been absorbed, she encourages her in her transition, which she began in 2019. The couple eventually divorced, although their relationship remains ” Good “. “Hormone treatment is a difficult choiceshe breathes. We know what we leave behind, but we don’t know what we’re going to find.”

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