Tokyo Olympics: New Zealand transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard gets DNF as China’s Li Wenwen takes gold in +87kg category
- Hubbard finishes with a DNF in the snatch, making two attempts at 125kg but failing both, while Li sets three Olympic records
- The 43-year-old, who competes in the +87kg weight class, is the second transgender athlete to compete at Tokyo 2020 after Canadian footballer Quinn
New Zealand transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard finished last in her group in the +87kg weightlifting competition, failing to record a snatch after attempted lifts at 120kg, then twice at 125kg, receiving a DNF (did not finish). She flashed a heart sign to the cameras as she left the podium.
The competition was won by China’s Li Wenwen, who set three Olympic records in the process. First, Li snatched 140kg, she then completed a clean and jerk of 180kg to wrap up the competition for a total of 320kg.
Li holds every available world record in the +87kg category including the snatch (148kg), the clean and jerk (187kg) and total (335kg). Li also holds all junior records for the same categories.
Hubbard became the first New Zealand weightlifter to win a medal at the world championships when she won silver medals in the +90kg overall and snatch at the 2017 competitoin in the US.
Hubbard was born a male and competed in men’s weightlifting categories at national level during her teens and into her early 20s. After she turned 23, Hubbard quit the sport but returned in her 30s and began entering competitions in 2017. Hubbard explained her journey in an quote that was posted on her official Olympic bio.
“One of the misconceptions that’s out there is that I’ve trained all my life and that transition has happened relatively late in the piece. What people probably don’t realise is that I actually stopped lifting in 2001, when I was 23, because it just became too much. But the world has changed, of course, and I feel like I’m now in a place where I can train and compete and cope with all of that – the pressure of a world that wasn’t really set up for people like myself.”
Hubbard has become the centre of an ongoing debate when it comes to transgender athletes in sport, and she told The New Zealand Herald the added scrutiny has at times been difficult.
“I‘m not going to say it wasn’t hard. You would have to be a robot to not be affected by some of that and what people were saying. But I can’t control what other people think, what they feel, what they believe and I’m not going to try. It’s not my job to tell them what to think, what to feel, or what to believe. All I can do is lift to the best of my ability and then let whatever happens, happen.”
“First openly trans Olympian to compete,” Quinn wrote. “I don’t know how to feel. I feel proud seeing ‘Quinn’ up on the line-up and on my accreditation. I feel sad knowing there were Olympians before me unable to live their truth because of the world. I feel optimistic for change. Change in legislature. Changes in rules, structures, and mindsets.”
