The transgender skateboarder who sparked fury by beating a 13-year-old girl to claim first prize in a recent contest has defended competing against children, telling DailyMail.com exclusively: ‘I wasn’t going to go easy on them just because they’re kids.’
Ricci Tres, 29, is a Los Angeles-based transgender woman who was formerly known as Richard Batres, a 2nd Class Petty Officer in the Navy who was married to a woman and has three kids. Two years ago, Tres started taking hormones to transition to become a woman after spending her childhood feeling ‘guilty’ about crossdressing.
Last year, she submitted a social media entry to take part in the women’s Olympic skateboarding qualifiers and she would have been allowed into the squad had she not failed hormone testing that found she still had too much testosterone in her body.
Now, after another year of hormones, she is within the IOC hormone requirements to compete as a woman.
Tres shot to infamy over the weekend after claiming first prize at The Boardr competition in New York City, an open competition which invites kids and adults to compete against each other. Shiloh Catori, 13, won the women’s competition last year followed by 16-year-old Christine Cottam and 10-year-old Juri Ikura.
This year, Shiloh was second to Tres. Many say it’s unfair that Tres, who lived 27 years as a man before coming out as trans, should be able to compete against the young girls and that it goes ‘beyond the pale’.
But she sees no issue with it, telling DailyMail.com the sport is not as physically demanding as others like swimming or running, and that age and gender ‘don’t count’.
‘I’m not going to go and be easy on them because they’re kids,’ she said in an interview on Tuesday.
