HUBBARD Laurel

General
GENDER TRANSITION
She was assigned male at birth and competed in men's weightlifting categories at national level during her teens and early twenties. At age 23 she quit weightlifting, but returned to the sport after transitioning to become a woman in her mid thirties, and began competing internationally in 2017. "One of the misconceptions that's out there is that I've trained all my life and that transition has happened relatively late in the piece. What people probably don't realise is that I actually stopped lifting in 2001, when I was 23, because it just became too much. But the world has changed, of course, and I feel like I'm now in a place where I can train and compete and cope with all of that - the pressure of a world that wasn't really set up for people like myself." (dailymail.co.uk, 08 May 2021; RNZ YouTube channel, 07 Dec 2017; cnn.com, 23 Mar 2017; au.news.yahoo.com, 20 Mar 2017)

MEDIA FOCUS
She was the subject of increased focus from the media and other competitors when she first started competing as a female. "I'm not going to say it wasn't hard. You would have to be a robot to not be affected by some of that and what people were saying. But I can't control what other people think, what they feel, what they believe and I'm not going to try. It's not my job to tell them what to think, what to feel, or what to believe. All I can do is lift to the best of my ability and then let whatever happens, happen." (nzherald.co.nz, 09 Dec 2017)

She became the first New Zealand weightlifter to stand on the podium at the world championships when she won silver medals in the +90kg overall and snatch at the 2017 World Championships in Anaheim, CA, United States of America. (SportsDeskOnline, 02 Jun 2021; nzherald.co.nz, 24 Feb 2018; stuff.co.nz, 06 Dec 2017)