FACES OF SPORTS
PATRICIO MANUEL: S I M P L Y
PATRICIO MANUEL Photo Crredit: Aswadhin, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
A M A Z I N G
BY IAN COLGATE (HE, HIM, HIS) We first heard about Patricio “Pat” Manuel from the Olympic Channel in 2017 when they contacted us to write about their mini-series entitled “Identity.” The miniseries chronicled the journey of six transgender athletes, including Manuel. Each segment of “Identity” lets the athletes do the talking by sharing their personal insights and journeys. You also hear from family, friends, coaches and teammates who share intimate views of how each athlete has grown and prospered as an individual as well as the impact that athlete has made on them, helping them to learn, understand and grow. The focus for all the athletes featured in “Identity” is about their love for sport and how it impacts their personal identities. The one constant in each athlete’s life has been sport. No matter what else they might have faced day-in and day-out they could always count on the love for their sport to carry them through even the hardest of times. This, in fact is a struggle most athletes can relate to. Sport is just as much an integral part of an athlete as is being straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. Facing an even greater struggle to become whole than most, asking a trans athlete to give up one part of the self to pursue another, essentially sabotages the quest for wholeness. But Manuel’s story started long before his appearance in “Identity.” Pat was born Patricia Manuel in 1985. Patricia was a natural fighter and by 2012 she was ready to compete for a spot on the U.S. Olympic boxing team — it was the first time the sport had been open to female boxers. Shortly before the match Manuel injured a shoulder but decided to fight in the bout anyway. Immediately the injured fighter knew she would not be able to win the match due to the injury. Manuel knew that his Olympic dreams were over, but in that moment his new dream began to take shape! He found the courage to begin his transition. The transition initially took four years to complete and by 2016 he was ready to fight. This time he was fighting as his authentic self, a man. That year he became U.S. Boxing’s first transgender male to compete in a boxing match and Manuel won that match. Fresh from his win, Manuel took on another opponent but lost this time around. In fact, he lost big; Manuel sustained a serious injury. To make matters worse, some of the other boxers refused to fight Manuel because he was a transgender athlete. But two years later Manuel competed in his first professional bout in 2018. After two years negotiating with the California Boxing Commission, the state finally authorized him to fight as a man and Manuel took the ring against Hugo Aguilar. Manual won the match in a unanimous decision at the end of the fourth round. He set another first—the first transgender man to win a professional boxing match. Following that win Manuel was tapped by Everlast, the leading manufacturer and licensor of boxing, mixed martial arts and fitness equipment to be a company spokesperson. The company had created an inclusion campaign and Manuel was a perfect fit. The iconic boxing brand had previously used the faces of such distinguished boxers as Jack Dempsey and Sugar Ray Robinson and now Pat Manuel’s face joins theirs as part of what Everlast calls a part of its “new crop of trailblazers.” In May 2019 the San Francisco 49ers launched their first official fan club for the LGBTQ+ community and supporters to talk about the importance of LGBTQ+ activism in sport. As one of the speakers, Manuel said that the advocacy of LGBTQ+ athletes must come from everyone. "I ask each of you to fight with us to make sure that we have a place, not only in sports but in the world," Manuel said. "Don't deny others the chance to change their lives, because I wouldn't know who I am without sports." Manuel describes himself on Facebook as a fighter, consultant and speaker, consciously constructed Being and old school with a new twist. I’d describe him as a trailblazer and as simply amazing.
38 COMPETE november - december 2020
