A Chinese woman athlete who won dozens of medals has thrown most of them away after learning she is really a man.
Xiao Nan wins another medal /Quirky China News
Xiao Nan, of Chengdu, won more than 40 medals as a women in student competitions after graduating from high school.
But after hospital tests confirmed Xiaoâs suspicions that she was really a man she has thrown out all but 10 of them.
âBeing a champion was never a happy thing to me. Standing on the podium made me feel guilty, and I always thought the real champion should have been the one standing next to me,â Xiao said.
Xiaoâs extraordinary athletic performances in schools and in provincial and national competitions, won her great honour and free access to university education.
But, inside, she felt confused: âI felt I often had an impulse or desire for women instead of men. And my body is more like a man than a woman.â
Xiao had a check-up at a local hospital and the result confirmed she had male chromosomes.
He is now living as a man and has begun a course of sex change surgery at Sichuan Xichan Plastic Surgery Hospital which will take nine months.
âThe first thing I want to do after the surgery is to go swimming, wearing only boxer shorts,â Xiao told Chengdu Business Daily.
Sometimes kids are born with ambiguous genitalia, and are assigned to the wrong gender, or are born with the âwrongâ genitalia, according to their chromosomes. They are then raised as a girl, compete as a girl, but are, genetically, a boy. There was a Polish woman who won Olympic gold medals who was later found to be male - and it wasnât a case of the authorities trying to pass off a man as a woman for Olympic glory - they really didnât know.
Thereâs a pretty good book (novel) about a girl who finds out that sheâs a boy when she/he is a teenager. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, won the Pulitzer Prize I think.
