Amazon Quiz: Laurel Hubbard, who has become the first ever transgender athlete picked to compete at an Olympics, is from which country?
Options:
1. Austria
2. New Zealand
3. Finland
4. Germany
Answer: New Zealand
Laurel Hubbard, a Kiwi weightlifter became the first openly transgender woman to participate in the Olympics in Tokyo 2020.
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Born in Auckland, New Zealand, Laurel Hubbard is ranked seventh in the IWF’s women’s +87 kg division. The 43-year-old is a female transgender. She is a national record holder at men’s events. Hubbard set New Zealand junior records in 1998 in the newly established M105+ division with snatch 135 kg.
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In 2001, at the age of 23, she stepped away from weightlifting completely. She told Stuff that “it just became too much to bear, the pressure of trying to fit into a world that perhaps wasn’t really set up for people like myself.” It was in 2012 when Hubbard transitioned to female and became Laurel Hubbard. She competed in international weightlifting for the first time in 2017.
Hubbard won a gold medal in the 90 kg+ category with a 123 kg snatch at the Australian International & Australian Open in Melbourne in 2017. She became the first trans woman to win an international weightlifting title for New Zealand. An elbow injury forced Hubbard to withdraw from the Commonwealth Games in 2018. After the injury, Hubbard announced her probable retirement from weightlifting.
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However, the Kiwi returned to the sport with two gold medals at the 2019 Pacific Games in Samoa. In 2020, she won the gold medal in the women’s +87 kg event at the Roma 2020 World Cup in Rome, Italy.
Hubbard is ranked 7th in the IWF’s women’s +87kg division but impressed in Olympic qualifications by earning the fourth-highest total.
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