After the Paris Olympics ended on a high note on Sunday regarding the International Olympic Committee’s initiatives on promoting inclusion, Valentina Petrillo, in a recent interview with BBC Sport, expressed her desire for her pioneer participation at the upcoming Paralympics to further help those efforts.

The sporting event, which is scheduled to start on 28 August, should piggy-back on recent political and social overtures made to protect transgender rights, but Paris 2024 wasn’t able to shake the cultural war between those who seek inclusion and more conservative movements as things turned for the worse after some raised concerns over the gender eligibility of two female boxers.

The IOC specified then through spokesman Mark Adams that both were female and that “this is not a transgender issue”, although the International Boxing Association, who has been banned from the Olympic movement and is at odds with the Thomas Bach-led organisation, stated through president Umar Kremlev that “both were male” and insinuated that “maybe changes were made” despite providing no proof.

Petrillo, who won two bronze medals at the Para Athletics Championships last year, did in fact transition from being a man to a woman in 2019, raising objections by those who consider she holds an unfair competitive advantage over strictly female para athletes.

"I have been waiting for this day for three years and I have done everything possible to earn it,” Petrillo countered to the BBC. "I deserve this selection and I want to thank the Italian Paralympic Federation and the Italian Paralympic Committee for having always believed in me, above all as a person as well as an athlete. The historic value of being the first transgender woman to compete at the Paralympics is an important symbol of inclusion."

Petrillo’s eligibility is indeed a delicate subject and the rules are currently quite murky, as there is no unified position regarding transgender inclusion in sports and it’s the international sport governing bodies the ones that are charged with setting their own policies, not the IPC.

Under World Para Athletics' guidelines, a person who is legally recognised as a woman is eligible to compete in the category their impairment qualifies them for, which differs from the policy by World Athletics, which has banned transgender women altogether from competing. The situation is less than ideal and, as in the Paris 2024 gender eligibility case, leaves plenty of room for discussion.

"I do think that the sport movement has to, guided by science, come up with better ty answers for these situations and for transgender athletes. We need to, based on science, have a better and probably a united answer to this population,” said Andrew Parsons, president of the International Paralympic Committee, while stressing the need for clarity and unity last week in Paris. "We cannot disrespect our rules. So sometimes as an individual I think one way or another, but we need to follow our constitution, we need to follow our own rules and in the specific sports the rules of the international federations need to be respected.”

Petrillo, who was diagnosed a degenerative eye condition at age 14, said in a previous interview that she knew she was a woman from as young as nine. She went on to win 11 national titles in the male T12 category for athletes with visual impairment between 2015 and 2018, when she started living as a woman before receiving hormone therapy the next year. "My metabolism has changed. I'm not the energetic person I was. In the first months of transition I put on 10kg. I can't eat the way I did before. I became anaemic, my haemoglobin is low, I'm always cold, I don't have the same physical strength, my sleep isn't what it was, I have mood swings,” she recalled. "I'm not the same as before."

She explained that her times became slower despite claiming medals at both World Para Athletics Championships and National Para Championships since transitioning and underlined that “this is not a lifestyle choice for me, this is who I am,” once again stressing the need for acceptance throughout the sports world and society.

"The way I am, like all transgender people who do not feel they belong to their biological gender, should not be discriminated against in the same way that race, religion or political ideology should not be discriminated against. And sport that imposes rules based on a binary way of thinking does not factor this in. It is sport that has to find a solution and excluding transgender athletes is clearly not that solution,” she concluded. "Ultimately, in the seven years in which transgender athletes have been able to compete in the female category, the number of instances in which they have stood out for their sporting results have been very few and far between."

The debate, however, rages on as more than 30 female Italian athletes signed a petition that was sent to the president of the Italian Athletics Federation and the ministries for Equal Opportunities and Sport, challenging Petrillo's right to compete in women's races.

Parsons confirmed last week that “for the moment, World Para Athletics rules allow her to compete, so she will be welcome as any other athlete," though insisted on the need for further discussion. “We also want to be fair with the other athletes in the field of play. It is a very difficult question. And science hopefully will be able to give us the answer. And what I would like to see in the future is that the whole of sport has a united position on it."