Transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard: "It gets better"
03 August 2021
Speaking to reporters after becoming the first openly transgender woman to compete in the Olympics, Laurel Hubbard on Tuesday expressed gratitude for the opportunity to compete as an athlete and the hope that her story will help convince
What she's saying: "All I have ever really wanted as an athlete is just to be regarded as an athlete," Hubbard, said in response to a question from Axios. "I suppose the thing I have been so grateful here in Tokyo is just being given those opportunities to just go through life as any other athlete."
Hubbard met for about half an hour with a small group of journalists at a Tokyo hotel on Tuesday, hours after competing in the women's +87 Kg weightlifting competition. She exited after being unsuccessful in her first three lifts.
Between the lines: Asked what message she had for fellow transgender people, Hubbard said: "My message is simply this: Life is difficult. There are always setbacks and disappointments but if there is one message to go for, it is this, it gets better."
- Hubbard said she has tried not to dwell on negative attention from from traditional and social media, "because it makes a hard job even harder."
"It's hard enough lifting a barbell but if you are putting more weight on it, then it makes it just an impossible task, really."
Transgender Olympian Laurel Hubbard, to reporters on Friday.
What's next: Hubbard said she doesn't know whether she plans to continue competing.
Go deeper:
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.