Rugby Star Ellia Green Makes History As First Olympian To Come Out As A Trans Man
August 16, 2022Ellia Green, one of the stars of Australia’s gold medal-winning women’s rugby sevens team at the 2016 Olympics, has come out as a trans man.
Green, who has kept the same name, told the Associated Press it was the best decision of his life. Realizing that sharing his experience could be lifesaving for others is what compelled Green to come out in a video to be shown to participants at an international summit on ending transphobia and homophobia in sport. The summit is being hosted 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 was part of Canada’s winning women’s soccer team in Tokyo last year.
Green 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. “Pretty much my rugby career ended and I had been in and out of mental health facilities for serious issues. My depression hit a new level of sadness.”
He’s in a much better place now with his partner, Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts, and their infant daughter, Waitui.
“Vanessa was pregnant and having to come to hospital to visit,” Green said. “I was having bad episodes. That’s the last time I want her to have to see me like that. But the only way to help heal is to talk about it … I’d like to help someone not feel so isolated by telling my story.”
The story has been a difficult one at times. Green was adopted and moved to Australia from Fiji at age 3. Recalling later childhood memories of domestic violence, Green said “caused a lot of long-lasting trauma.”
“As a kid I remember I thought I was a boy in public, I had a short [haircut] and whenever we met new people they thought I was a boy,” Green says. “I always used to wear my brother’s clothes, played with tools, and ran around with no shirt on. Until I grew breasts, and I thought ‘oh no.’”
His mother helped channel Green into sports, and excellence as a sprinter in track and field eventually led to a professional career in rugby. However, 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 selection for the Australian women’s team for the delayed Tokyo Olympics.
“I spent a lot of time after I finished up my career with Australian rugby just in the house, in a dark room, I didn’t have the confidence to see anyone,” Green says in the video pre-recorded for the summit. “The one thing that did keep me positive is that I had already planned my surgery and treatment towards my transition. It was something I was counting down the days with my partner.”
Now Green wants to advocate for others, emphasizing the harm that can be caused when sporting bans are introduced and how those policies can amplify negativity toward trans and gender diverse people. “Banning transgender people from sport is disgraceful and hurtful,” Green says. “It only means the rates of suicide and mental health issues will get even worse.”
Green’s comments coincide with the release of a study by the University of British Columbia in Canada and Monash University in Melbourne, Australia which shows a disconnect between rugby’s leaders and the women who play rugby. The survey shows that while about 30% of women think trans women have an unfair advantage they overwhelmingly do not support banning trans athletes from rugby.
Playing or coaching rugby is not on Green’s radar for now. He’s currently working at the Sydney International Container Terminal, but is also studying for a university degree in international security and has ambitions to be advising companies on general and cyber security. Green is also a “full-time daddy, and it’s hard, maybe harder” than anything he’s done.
Green hopes his story will inspire other trans people to be confident in their decisions about who they want to be.
“I just knew it was going to be the most liberating feeling when I had that surgery and to be in the body 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.”
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