Shocking: Vietnamese female track and field athlete discovered to be male

Thanks to some in-depth tests, an athlete in Bac Giang was identified as male while he and his family were completely unaware - a story that is attracting public attention.

Among the five suspected cases of Vietnamese athletics, there is a female athlete from Bac Giang who was identified as "completely male". The discovery was accidental, and even the "guy's" parents were shocked because they did not know.

Athlete Nguyen Thi Thuy An is the first case of cross-dressing in a competition whose identity is known to the entire sports community, but it is only at the level of suspicion and not yet known specifically. Also in athletics, more than ten years ago, there was an athlete with a very feminine name (starting with the letter H) and appearance who was discovered to be male through a "full" examination.

Nguyen Trong Hien, head of the medical department of the National Sports Training Center in Hanoi, who followed the case closely from beginning to end, recalled that the true gender of the young national athlete was discovered when the athlete was taken for an injury examination in 2005 when doctors immediately saw some unusual signs.

A secret, in-depth ultrasound was performed, with the result that H had male hormones and no mammary glands. After lobbying H to agree to a number of other comprehensive tests, it was even more shocking to find that “she” did not have any female-like parts, but instead had hidden testicles.

When the doctors informed her, H almost collapsed from shock. She admitted that she also saw some differences from other girls, but simply thought it was because she followed sports and that she had never worried that she was not a woman. As confirmed by her teammate, national player Nguyen Thi Oanh, who had trained and lived with her for many years, in reality, H still always used girls' clothes, accessories, and even lipstick as usual.

After the incident, H still earnestly asked to stay and continue training and competing, but after careful consideration, the sports industry and the management unit finally decided to let her retire. At that time, with the story of men pretending to be women or transgender athletes, sports people had no idea or imagination, let alone a solution.

It was even more tragic when the people responsible for bringing H home, her parents were shocked because they had previously believed that their 17-year-old son was a girl. H’s mother said that she had also seen some unusual signs in her son during puberty but still thought nothing was wrong. For the whole family, it was like a bolt of lightning, a misfortune that fate had befallen them. They had no opinion about their son having to quit sports, they just hoped that the teachers would “keep it a secret” because if the villagers knew, “he wouldn’t be able to bear it.”

Head of the athletics department of the General Department of Sports and Physical Training Duong Duc Thuy said that athletics training managers had no further contact with the former national youth athlete after that.

According to VnExpress