a new zealand weightlifter is set to
become the first transgender athlete to
compete at the upcoming tokyo olympics
but critics argue
that she has an unfair advantage over
biological women our next guest who
placed 13th
at the 2016 olympics was forced to drop
a weight class when laurel hubbard
began competing as a woman in 2017.
former new zealand weightlifter tracy
lambridge joins us now good morning
tracy
good morning good morning thanks for
being with us congratulations on making
it to the olympics
oh thank you very much it was quite an
exciting time i'm sure i'm sure now you
know laurel hubbard right
yes and how did that affect you when she
wanted to compete against you
um at first i was pretty angry pretty
upset
um pretty disappointed there were a lot
of emotions
but i was i really wasn't that happy
about it
um the way i found out was via a phone
call from my coach at the time it was
like a monday morning and i got a phone
call and i was told all my records had
just been broken and
i was like what do you mean i'm like
there's no one else close to me i
shouldn't have my records broken and
then
yeah i was told while laurel's started
weightlifting and she competed on the
weekends so
as of now you're number two wow so that
forced you you had to go down and wait
right
well i was told by the national
weightlifting body that i either needed
to
drop away category or look at retiring
because the competitions we were looking
at qualifying for
you could only send one per nation in
the body weight um so they were like
it's not going to be you so your options
are
lose 13 kilo or 18 kilos in three months
or you can retire and what did you do
i'm quite competitive um so i lost the
weight within three months
how hard was that i had it was very hard
but
you know i i surrounded myself with
great people i had a really good support
team
um and i'm i'm very competitive and i'm
hard working so i just
did what i had to do to accomplish my
goal of competing at my third
commonwealth games that
it meant a lot to me to show i guess
the commonwealth that i wasn't knocked
out that easily
and are you still lifting no so
actually at the end of the competition i
had just had enough
i was disappointed within new zealand
weightlifting
and i was also just not willing to put
myself
through any more disappointment i guess
or
it wasn't worth me being upset anymore
about the situation
and the way i was treated as an athlete
so
my family all came out to australia
watched me compete and that was where i
um retired and haven't stepped back on a
platform since
wow i know that uh there have been
they're trying to find solutions to this
this issue and i've been reading some
articles about it and they've talked
about maybe doing away with genders
maybe just uh you what however whatever
your ability is that's who you compete
against
maybe give people a handicap like they
do in golf what's your opinion
that's a bit ridiculous like um in
australian sport
where there are reasons for having a
male and female category you can't just
do away with categories
um i look at a lot of the young athletes
around us there are 14 15 year old boys
lifting what
um what are females left that are
you know these boys are at a lighter
weight category so it's honestly just
going to knock women out of sport
and women are not going to want to
participate in something where
there is an opportunity for them to um
you know
win medals or go to international
competitions just
yeah you have to have the categories
there's no there's no other way around
it
tracy we wish you all the best
congratulations on your accomplishments
it's amazing
thank you very much you're welcome lots
of hard work hi everyone i'm brian
kilmeade i want you to do me a favor i
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