Gavin Hubbard believes that he is a woman.* His delusion, while sad, would be inconsequential were it not for the fact that he took a space on New Zealand’s women’s Olympic weightlifting team, knocking out an actual woman, 18-year-old Roviel Detenamo. Those who believe that women and men are biologically different objected, claiming that his lifetime of testosterone gave him a huge physical advantage. With him as a precedent, transgender men will regularly squeeze actual women out from sports. However, at the Olympics, Hubbard missed the snatch three times, knocking himself out of medal contention. The question is whether he lost because he choked or because he was making a political point.
Hubbard, who lived and competed in weightlifting as a man until he was 35, is now 43 and competes in the women’s 87+ kilogram division. He lost badly:
Twice the barbell, which had 120kg and then 125kg on it, fell behind her after she had snatched it powerfully from the floor. On another occasion Hubbard got it off the ground and appeared to have made a successive lift, only for two of the three judges to rule she did not have full control.
She left the arena having smiled and drawn a heart with her hands.
Here’s the interesting thing about his failures: When Hubbard was competing as a man, he was snatching 135 kg and that has diminished, whether because of his age or his female hormones. Thus, after Hubbard started taking female hormones, he snatched at 131 kg in 2017, something he did again in 2019. He’s succeeded in snatching 127 kg several times, as well as 125 kg. What matters is that he ought to have handled a 120 kg barbell easily...but he didn’t. They're Coming For You -- And Nobody's Laughing
The big question, then, is whether Hubbard caved in the crunch or if there’s more going on. Paula Bolyard gives him the benefit of the doubt, noting that, at 43, he’s way on the shady side of a weightlifter’s career. Also, the media find Hubbard fascinating, which put a lot of pressure on him.
But something very important resulted from his failure: People who said it wouldn’t harm women to have men compete in their sports can now point to Hubbard as the perfect example of why it’s not a problem for men to compete against women. Multiple tweets triumphantly offer some variation of “See, your predictions were all wrong.”
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