Tennis great and women’s sports advocate Martina Navratilova is blasting the Paralympics for allowing transgender Italian sprinter Valentina Petrillo to compete in the women’s categories in next week’s games.
Navratilova called Petrillo a “pathetic cheater” and criticized the games for allowing him to run in the women’s 200 and 400 M races in the T12 class for visually impaired athletes.
Petrillo is a pathetic cheater. https://t.co/7vaDMmz1Bg
— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) August 22, 2024
In another post, Navratilova said it was “sickening” to see the Italian “stealing women’s trophies,” Fox News reported.
“Yet another male stealing women’s trophies. In [the] Paralympics, no less. Sickening,” she wrote.
Petrillo suffered a degenerative eye condition since he was a teen but competed as a male for years in the T12 category, winning 11 national titles. But now, at 50, the running claims to have “transitioned” to being female and wants to take women’s titles, too.
World Athletics banned men from competing as women if they “transitioned” after puberty, but World Para Athletics did not join its fellows in that ban.
Instead, World Para Athletics relies on testosterone levels and transition times as criteria for inclusion.
Petrillo claims that it is perfectly fair to allow him to compete as a woman because “it doesn’t mean that because I was born a man that I will be stronger than a woman.”
He already won bronze in the 200 m and 400 m races at last year’s World Para Athletics Championships.
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