It will be a childhood dream come true when the 50-year-old steps out onto Stade de France to compete in the 200 and 400 meters, in the T12 category for visually impaired athletes.
Valentina Petrillo "came out", as she herself puts it, as a woman in 2017. With the help of hormone treatment, she was able to lower her testosterone levels to comply with international rules for women's para-sports.
Since 2023, when the runner changed her legal gender to female, she has won bronze medals in both the 200 and 400 meters at the World Championship. But the Paralympics will be the most important thing she has done in her athletic career, says Valentina Petrillo in an interview with the AFP news agency.
However, she is aware that her participation in Paris – three years after weightlifter Laurel Hubbard became the first trans person to participate in the Olympic Games – will likely be noticed for more than her athletic achievements.
Petrillo expects criticism and online harassment of the kind that affected the controversial boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting, who are not trans people, during the Olympic Games in Paris.
But I'm here, I've fought for several years to get here and I'm not afraid. I am who I am, she says.
Valentina Petrillo hopes to be a role model for trans people in sports.
I hope to be the first of many, a reference point for others and a source of inspiration, she says.
