Australian rugby player Ellia Green has
come out as transgender, making him the first Olympian to come out as
a transgender man.
Green, 29, shared the news in a video
shown at the Bingham Cup International Summit on Tuesday in Canada.
“Toward the end of my career, I
started having some difficulties with my mental health. I promised
myself that when my rugby career ended, I would continue to live the
rest of my life in the identity and the body that I that I know I am
meant to be in,” Green said in the video.
"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. 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,” he said, referring to mental health issues he
suffered since retiring from rugby last year.
Green won a gold medal at the 2016 Rio
Olympics and a silver medal at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
Green and his partner, Vanessa
Tumbull-Roberts, recently welcomed daughter Waitui.
"I knew something that would make
me really happy is that, No. 1, I am going to live the rest of my
life with my partner and my daughter," Green
told the AP. "And that I am going to live the rest of my
life as her dad."