Vancouver’s Michelle Dumaresq is the best women’s downhill mountain biker in all of Canada. But if you asked Michelle ten years ago if she ever dreamed of achieving such feats, he would have flipped up his welding helmet, put down his stinger, spit out his Copenhagen, which, by the way is where the first gender-altering surgeries took place, and said “Oh, sure, as soon as I re-arrange a few things.”   

 

            For the second week straight we’ve gone to Canada. Why? Because there’s some funny sport things going on north of the border and besides, where else can you find a trans-gendered-downhill- mountain biker willing to race down a trail called Severed Dick? Or be in a documentary about her life coming out this month called 100% Woman. 

            We applaud her. Because contrary to what most people would think, her genital changes were not the result of a biking accident as it is with most bikers who do wheelie drops off rock faces on a banana seat. She knew she had to be who she had to be. And she had the stones to change what she needed to change.  

 

            When she was a man, Michael was six-feet tall and weighed 210. Now, as a woman, she’s 5’10 and 175. Make up your own joke here because we don’t understand it. Her weight has redistributed, more fat, less muscle and she doses heavy on estrogen. Michelle says, “I didn’t believe the mood-swing stuff but, hey, I found out it’s really there.”

            When she got into competitive biking her competitors were eager to advise – even with diet and make-up tips. That is, until she started winning and even beating the pros, like in her first B.C. Cup race. Then she won her second race and then her third race and then the other competitors told her to get her make-up at Ace Hardware. Even last week as Dumaresq stood at the Gold Medal podium at the Canadian Downhill Championships, the boyfriend of the second place finisher – Danika Schroeter - ran up to the podium to give Danika a shirt that read “100% Pure Woman Champ.” All the competitors are now trying to pass through the “If-you-ever-had-a-penis” rule but for the tee shirt stunt, Schroeter, received a three-month suspension.

 

            Back in 2001, the Canadian Cycling association suspended Michelle’s license, but then re-issued it in 2002 when they found her British Columbia birth certificate reads FEMALE. It’s a revisionist Canadian thing, we think, maybe something to do with the exchange rate.

 

She still punches the clock on her metalworking day job – cue up the Flashdance music – and makes do on small sponsorships and tiny winnings from biking. She may be the most visible trans-sexual athlete out there but says she’s not the only one. She corresponds with over 100 trans-gendered jocks, all of them stealth. Better to be stealth than be on the Springer show. We won’t even try to devise this particular Jerry Springer Show title, except to say it’d likely have either the words “Chicks with…” or “Jocks who had…” Heaven help us to stay away from Springer stuff.

 

The greatest women’s downhiller, Anne-Caroline Chausson from France, has said that if Dumaresq ever beat her, she would quit racing. Chausson has won seven world championships and if ever there were a reason to cheer on Michelle Jacquelyn, Anne-Caroline has given it to us.

Keep biking, Michelle… and winning. You’ve got eggs. Well, maybe you don’t, but you know what we mean.