Who Is Laurel Hubbard? 43 Year Old Weightlifter and First Transgender Athlete To Compete at Olympics

Newsweek via MSN ^ | 08/01/2021 | Samantha Lock

[SeekAndFind]

Laurel Hubbard is set to make history when she competes as the first openly transgender athlete at an Olympic Games.

The New Zealander will take the stage on August 2 for the women's super heavyweight +87kg weightlifting event.

At 43 years old, Hubbard is also set to be the oldest weightlifter competing in the sport at the Tokyo games.

Who is Laurel Hubbard?

Born in February 1978, the weightlifter hails from Auckland, New Zealand.

Her father, Dick Hubbard, was a wealthy cereal company magnate and briefly served as Auckland's mayor from 2004 to 2008.

Hubbard revealed she took up "an archetypally male" sport in a bid to feel more masculine.

"I thought perhaps if I tried something that was so masculine perhaps that's what I would become,'' she told Radio New Zealand in 2017. "But sadly, that wasn't the case.... sad in the sense that maybe it would have made some of the darker periods in my life a bit more manageable."

Transition

Hubbard began transitioning in 2012 at 35 years of age.

Before that, Hubbard took part in male weightlifting competitions. After transitioning, she began competing in international weightlifting events.

Weightlifting

Back in 1998 at the age of 20, Hubbard set a men's New Zealand national junior record with a 300kg total in the junior +105kg division.

Three years later in 2001, Hubbard withdrew from the sport, explaining that it "became too much to bear ... just the pressure of trying to fit into a world that perhaps wasn't really set up for people like myself."

In 2017, the New Zealander competed internationally as Laurel Hubbard for the first time. She took home the gold medal at the Australian International championships in the heaviest women's division, lifting 123kg in the snatch discipline and 145kg in the clean and jerk

[joma89]

When one lives in a world of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

[Gay State Conservative]

Since I was five I've identified as the Queen of Spain. But,strangely,on every one of the fifty occasions that I've knocked on the front door of the Royal Palace in Madrid an ambulance has shown up and taken me to a hospital.

And nobody will explain why!

[Steven Tyler]

You go girl.......oh wait, never mind

[Steven Tyler]

It wears pink sneakers

[fwdude]

Somehow I thought the Olympics would say “You’ve got to be kidding!” to this woke nonsense.

In the first place, I thought the use of any hormone by athletes is an automatic disqualification. Trannies have take them by the fistfuls

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

So what is the REAL difference between this man posing as a woman and Henrich-Dora Ratjen, a man who ran as a woman(with Nazi blessings) in the 1936 Olympics?

[TChad]

I thought the use of any hormone by athletes is an automatic disqualification.

I just tried to find out of that was still true for testosterone, but I have timed out on my internet searches without finding a clear answer. My current guess is that the absolute testosterone level matters, not how one acquires that testosterone level. It is now possible for biologically female athletes to be disqualified from the Olympics because they have a too-high testosterone level:

https://www.axios.com/namibia-disqualified-naturally-high-testosterone-olympic-24d0f1f9-9491-47bb-8c5a-199bf91e6255.html

It seems to me that these Namibian women, IF they are biologically female, should be allowed to compete whatever their natural testosterone level, while biological females who take any testosterone should be disqualified. However, I do not think that either rule is currently in effect. Just my guess.