Bewilderment over how father-of-two, who won 11 Italian men’s titles, allowed to line up at Paralympics for T12 400m as a woman
“This was a dream,” says Valentina Petrillo, who today became a Paralympic sprinter at the age of 51, “that I had since I was a little girl.” Except this is an athlete who was never a little girl in the first place. The Italian is a father-of-two who was still competing at 45 as a male, who won national titles in men’s track and field, and whose self-portrayal in 2021 was of a “tough guy who would speak dismissively of women, who would have given you the idea he was sexist”. And yet on Monday morning at the Stade de France, Petrillo, courtesy of institutional cowardice at every level, lined up in the visually-impaired classification of the 400 metres as a woman.
