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."