Olympic rugby champion Green finds release in transition

BRISBANE, Australia (AP) — Ellia Green realized as a child, long before she became an Olympic champion, that a person’s identity and the gender assigned at birth can be very different things.

Now, some 20 years later, one of the stars of Australia’s women’s rugby sevens team, winners of the gold medal at the 2016 Olympics, has become a man.

Green, who has kept the same name, told The Associated Press it was the best decision of his life. The realization that sharing his experience could save the lives of others is what prompted Green to go public in a video to be shown Tuesday to participants in an international summit on ending transphobia and homophobia in sport. The summit will be held in Ottawa as part of the Bingham Cup rugby tournament.

The only other transgender or gender-diverse Olympic gold medalists are Caitlyn Jenner and Quinn, who has a name and was part of the Canadian women’s soccer team that won in Tokyo last year.

Seeing so few trans athletes at the elite level and so much negative commentary on social media, particularly since World Rugby’s decision to ban transgender women from playing women’s rugby, hastened Green’s drive to highlight the harm such things can cause. to some children.

More importantly, it is an attempt to draw attention to a serious health problem: some studies say that more than 40% of trans youth had considered attempting suicide.

Green, 29, has admitted to being in a “dark place” after retiring from rugby at the end of 2021.

“This is what happened to me,” Green told The AP. “My rugby career was pretty much over and I had been in and out of mental health centers for serious issues. My depression reached a new level of sadness.”

He is in a much better place now with his partner, Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts, and their young daughter, Waitui.

“Vanessa was pregnant and had to go to the hospital for a visit,” Green said. “She was having bad episodes. That’s the last time I want him to have to see me like this. But the only way to help heal is to talk about it. . . I would like to help someone not feel so isolated by telling my story.”

The story has been difficult at times. Green, who was assigned female at birth, was adopted by Yolanta and Evan Green and moved to Australia from Fiji at age 3. Recalling later childhood memories of domestic violence, seeing Yolanta being abused in another relationship, Green said she “caused a lot of time.” -lasting trauma.”

“I guess witnessing that, I knew from an early age that it wasn’t (the kind of) relationship I wanted to be in, but it kind of shaped me on how to treat a woman,” Green said. “I think even in traumatic circumstances, there was a lot to learn from it.”

It was also a childhood that for Green was marked by overwhelming understanding.

“When I was a kid, I remember thinking I was a boy in public, I had a short (haircut) and every time we met new people, they thought I was a boy,” says Green. “I always wore my brother’s clothes, played with tools and ran around shirtless. Until my breasts grew and I thought ‘oh no’”.

“My mom dressed me in girl’s clothes. . . She always wanted to make her happy, so if she wanted me to wear a dress, she would put me in a dress.”

Yolanta also helped channel Green into sports, and excellence as a sprinter in track and field eventually led to a professional rugby career. The all-action seven-a-side rugby made its Olympic debut in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and the women’s competition was held first, with Australia beating New Zealand in the final to win the inaugural gold medal. Green, a flying winger, was among the stars of the show.

In the meantime, however, the deeper feelings were becoming clearer for Green and really peaked after announcing the decision to retire from rugby last November, a few months after missing out on the Australian women’s team selection for the Games. Tokyo Olympics delayed.

“After I finished my Australian rugby career, I spent a lot of time at home, in a dark room, I didn’t have the confidence to see anyone,” Green says in the pre-recorded video for the summit.

“I was ashamed of myself, I felt like I had let a lot of people down, especially me and my mom. I felt like a complete failure, it was heartbreaking,” Green added, explaining the feelings that lingered after being left out of the Olympic team. “The only thing that kept me positive is that I had already planned my surgery and treatment for my transition. It was something that I was counting down the days with my partner.”

Now Green wants to advocate for others, emphasizing the harm that can be done when sports bans are introduced and how those policies can amplify negativity towards trans and gender diverse people.

“Banning transgender people from participating in sports is shameful and hurtful,” says Green. “It just means that suicide rates and mental health problems will get even worse.”

Green’s comments coincide with the publication of a study from the University of British Columbia in Canada and Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, showing a disconnect between rugby leaders and women who play rugby. The survey shows that while around 30% of women think trans women have an unfair advantage, the vast majority do not support a ban on trans athletes from rugby.

Playing rugby at any level, or even coaching, is not on Green’s radar for now. He currently works at the Sydney International Container Terminal, “on the docks,” he says, but is also studying for a university degree in international security and has ambitions to advise companies on general and cyber security.

For now, Green says he’s a “full-time dad, and it’s tough, maybe tougher” than anything he’s ever done. He also credits her partner Vanessa, who has a law degree and is now doing her Ph.D.: “She inspires me every day.”

Green hopes her story inspires other trans people to be confident in their decisions about who they want to be.

“I knew it was going to be the most liberating feeling when I had that surgery and being in the body that I knew I had to be,” Green says in the video. “That was a bright spark in my mind during these dark times facing demons, but I knew there was light at the end of the tunnel.”

He adds in the AP telephone interview: “I knew that one thing that would make me very happy is that, number 1, I am going to live the rest of my life with my partner and my daughter. And that I am going to live the rest of my life as his father.”

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AP sportswriter John Pye contributed to this report.

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