Gender and pro cycling

[DirtDiva]

O/T
Hi tlkiwi - yeh, last Monday was great - v.sunny. Are you over here for work or for hols?

Both: I'm yet another twenty-something Kiwi over here on a two-year working holiday visa.

[chelle]

Hi everyone, Michelle here.

I've been reading all of your responses to this thread and I must say that this is rare. What usually happens is people make a bunch of off base assumptions about me and then top it off by calling me "it" or "thing". I usually only respond when the thread is respectful and this has been.

As I'm sure you can imagine there is much more to any story than can be printed in a magazine. Even if you have seen the film "100percentwoman" you still don't know everything that went on over the two years that the film was made. I have received an incredible amount of support from people who share a similar history or from people who were just touched in some way. That being said there are many people out ther who wish that I would just go away. Intollerance is still prevellant even if most of us wish that it wasn't.

For the past couple of years it's been my role to not only be a professional athlete but to also be the "posterchild for trans athlete's". Balancing these has been very difficult and I always hope that I've made the right decision to be public. I'm not sure that I'll ever know.

I certainly do not expect everyone to agree with me being able to race but I do expect people to inform themselves before making any judgements. Most of what has been said here is correct. Loss of muscle mass, decrease in bone density, decrease in red blood cell production and changes in brain chemistry all contribute to my "case". If I thought that I had an unfair advantage I would never compete. In sport we all try to use our natural advantages. In my case I have several attributes that I feel make me a very good downhiller and probably not a good xc racer. Sport is never an equal playing field and the notion that there is a purity to sport is a dream. Everyone can ride a bike, many can compete but few will ever make it to the elite ranks. There ae many factors that make a great athlete, dedication, skill, natural ability, luck. There will always be some who excell is certain sports and others who do not. I am just very fortunate that I get to compete and one day I hope that having an athlete with a trans history in the field won't be a big deal.

Thanks to you all for this disscusion and your support.

Always smilin

Michelle Dumaresq

[Melody]

Hi Michelle! Wow. Never expected someone we were talking about to post here. That's pretty cool. Anyway, wanted to say Welcome to the TE Forums Taking a page out of CM's book, you should say hi and post in the "Getting to Know You" thread.

Mel

[slinkedog]

Michelle... very cool to have you here! Welcome to TE and we hope to hear more from you! Hang in there and follow your heart.

It's so very true about all of us being different and there not really being a level playing field. My husband is a great cyclist... has wonderful instincts, strong legs and the ability to keep going when he's in serious pain... but he has had really horrible VO2 max readings when he's been tested. His aerobic capacity is such that he was just not able to go past cat 1 status to pro level. So, you live with your body the way it is and get on with life, right?

[DirtDiva]

Thanks to you all for this disscusion and your support.

You're welcome, and it's great to see you here.

[spazzdog]

Keep on pedalin' Michelle... and keep on winning. Folks will either raise their game (which I'm certain they can if they put their mind/body to it) or they'll quit... and I don't get the impression that at your level of competition there are a lot of quitters out there.

Stick around grrl! This is a great place to hang out.

spazzdog

[CorsairMac]

welcome to the board chelle!......isn't this a great place to come "home" to?....I have yet to see anything here that I thought was disrespectful or narrow-minded or cruel....and I've seen that on other boards. It's why I'd rather hang here than do my job! I hope we hear more from you - I'm betting you've got tons of advice you can share with us!

[MightyMitre]

Great to hear from you Chelle and thanks for posting.

I echo CorsairMac - this really is a special place to visit. I was looking on another board the yesterday and the abuse and personal insults were just beyond belief! There was a TEN page thread which started out as a debate about whether helmets should be made compusory in the UK, but by 3 pages in it had degenerated into personal insults, sexism, aggressive language...I actually said to my BF - 'Never in a million years would you see anything like this on TE.'

Looking forward to getting to know you. Great to have you here