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LONDON, Ont. — Kristen Worley grabs a large pink gym bag out of her car and walks into the women's change room at the Forest City Velodrome.
She emerges in skin-tight racing gear provided by a potential new sponsor and carefully tucks her ponytail into an aerodynamic helmet for her final workout on her home course before the women's national track cycling championships, being held this weekend in Dieppe, N.B. A good showing will give her a shot at qualifying for next year's Olympic Games in Beijing.
At 39, Ms. Worley is a serious contender; she has a commanding presence among the other cyclists as she travels the London, Ont., track's steep curves at 50 kilometres an hour. And yet the muscles in her thighs and arms look beefy; they don't have the definition you might expect in someone who grinds through five or six hours a day on a bike.
The cycling skills are a holdover from what she calls her “previous life,” but the extra fat is the result of leaving that life behind. In 1996, as a man named Chris, she started taking hormones to begin the process of becoming a woman. Five years later, surgery completed the transition.
Transgender cyclist Kristen Worley trains at the Velodrome in London, Ont. (Geoff Robbins/Globe and Mail)
“If I were to take my clothes off, you wouldn't know,” Ms. Worley insists. “I'm no different than any woman who has had a hysterectomy.”
It has been 55 years since an ex-GI named George Jorgenson realized his dreams and shocked the world by travelling to Denmark for surgery and returning to the Bronx as Christine Jorgensen. Hard numbers are still difficult to find, but a research paper presented this week at a conference in Chicago suggests that as many as one person in 500 feels estranged from his or her body. These people are so distanced from their assigned sex that they are desperate to change it.
As a result, parents are more accepting of children who feel this way, and so are schools. Last year, a boy was admitted to a South Florida kindergarten class as a girl. A year earlier, the boy who had been elected to head a Toronto high school's student council came back after the summer holidays as a girl, and officials made sure students and teachers alike were sensitive to the situation.
The trend also has spread to the pantheon of physical perfection: athletics. A growing number of transitioned athletes now compete at an elite level. Professional mountain biker Michelle Dumaresq won the Canadian women's downhill championship last year and Danish golfer Mianne Bagger has earned a berth on the Ladies European Tour.
Like Ms. Worley, both were once men, and there are those who contend that, when it comes to world-class athletics, they simply aren't the same as other women. They challenge the notion that it's fair to have competitors who were born and raised as males pull up to the starting line with women.
At the same time, a growing number of sports experts now counter that argument; in fact, many contend that because of what they've had to do to their bodies, transitioned women are really at a physical disadvantage.
But Ms. Worley insists that the real issue is one of equality for people like her – both in sport and in broader society. She dreams of carrying the Canadian flag into the Olympics' opening ceremonies, of sending a powerful message that people who change gender aren't mentally ill or sexual deviants, that they're normal and can lead healthy, successful lives.
She, for example, is an elite water skier as well as a competitive cyclist, has a successful career as a design engineer and is in a loving relationship with the woman she married when she was a man. They live in Toronto and hope to start a family.
“I'm a woman on the move,” she says as she pulls off the track for a pit stop to make adjustments on her new bike. Sweat drips off her face, carrying flecks of mascara with it.
But is Beijing really in her future?
Sports have been part of Kristen Worley's life for as long as she can remember, an escape from the overpowering anxiety she felt even as a four-year-old, when her parents told her to toughen up or dressed her in blue and grey, not the bright colours she craved.
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