The deadline for weightlifters to qualify for the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games is tomorrow (May 31) and there is no doubt about who, among the qualifiers, wins the gold medal for attracting publicity.
That award goes to someone who was unknown in weightlifting at the time of the last Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro five years ago, and who did not make her first lift in international competition until March 2017.
Step forward Laurel Hubbard, the New Zealander who will compete in the over-87 kilograms women’s super-heavyweight category scheduled for August 2.
There are plenty within the sport - you have only to look at social media to see how many - who think Hubbard should not be there.
I admit to being one of them, not because of any outrage at how Hubbard qualified - there is nothing wrong with that - but because her participation will seriously diminish the chances of having a rational discussion about transgender policies. She should not take her opportunity.
Before transitioning, Laurel competed at a reasonably high level through the junior ranks, hitting a 300kg total in the +105 men’s category.
To put that in perspective, that total would have won the past couple of Junior National events in the United States, but would not come close to earning a place on an international team.
At the 2019 Junior World Championships, a 300kg total would have been good enough for last place by 31kg.
In short, pre-transition Laurel was talented, but not a world-calibre athlete.
At age 35, Laurel started competing as a woman in the +90 (now +87) women’s category.
Although her total was down from her days as a junior male, she made 285kg in Pattaya, Thailand at the 2019 World Championships, her best in international competition and good enough for sixth place.
Most of her totals tend to be in the 270-280kg range, good enough for the top 10 in any recent international event. If Hubbard were to place sixth in Tokyo there would probably not be much uproar. If she is on the podium, and circumstances suggest that it could happen, it will be a disaster for transgender policy.
If China sends Li Wenwen, the best of its many elite super-heavyweights, she should win.
Tatiana Kashirina from Russia, who has the next best total, is serving a suspension.
North Korea is not participating so Kim Kuk-hyang, the only other non-Chinese athlete, besides Kashirina, to have made 300kg in her career, will not be there.
That opens the silver and bronze medals wide open.
Among the major contenders for those spots are the American Sarah Robles, whose best total is 290kg but who tends to total in the 280kg range, Emily Campbell from Britain, who just made 276kg at the European Championships and looks good for another 10kg at the Olympic Games.
Anastasiia Lysenko of Ukraine and Lee Seon-mi of South Korea are others, and even without the Hubbard controversy it should make for a great session of weightlifting.
If an American or a Briton is displaced by Hubbard on the podium in Tokyo, it will spotlight transgender policy, at least in the western world, to a far greater degree.
The question then becomes: Is Laurel Hubbard the person advocates want to be the face of transgender policy?
The question is rhetorical because the answer is obviously “no”.
Having an individual who spent most of her adult life as a man, transitioning at age 35, as the face of a movement will surely spell disaster for any real transgender policy from ever taking effect or even being considered.
Although it should not be the case, anecdotes make policy, and Laurel Hubbard is a totally unsympathetic character upon which to make policy decisions.
If she wins a medal, she will highlight the fact that men should not be competing in women’s sports, that it is patently unfair.
The only thing people will notice is that an above-average male lifter just placed at the Olympics as a woman, and that the laudable efforts of other women were devalued, in real terms, because of that.
To believe "people" will view this any other way is simply delusional.
