Canadian cyclist Worley blazes own trail as voice for gender diversity in sport
Kristen Worley remembers glancing down onto the street from the 19th storey window of the Ontario Human Rights in the heart of Toronto’s financial district.
Around her sat some of the most powerful people in Olympic sport. That might have been the moment it hit home. The competitive cyclist — who’d been through proverbial hell and back since she was born a baby boy and adopted by an upper-middle-class Ontario family — had challenged sport on its rules around gender testing, sexual identity and hormone regulation.
And won.
“I remember many of my defeatists in Ottawa who said ‘Kristen, you’ll never do this.’ They were always trying to defeat me,” Worley said. “I remember looking out onto Bay Street and all the guys who were here, and thinking ‘I got them here.’ That was a real turning point . . . realizing that they’re just like you and me.