• Laurel Hubbard is the first openly transgender athlete to qualify for the Olympic Games.
• At first glance, she’s one of the top contenders to win the gold medal at 87 kg.
• However, she has never broken a 300kg total - while several of her competitors are well above that.

TOKYO - Laurel Hubbard is one of the favorites to win the Women’s 87 kg weightlifting gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics.

Hubbard, who is trans, will be the first openly transgender athlete to compete in the Olympic games.

Some may think that this gives her an undue advantage over the field, but Hubbard actually isn’t even the betting favorite to win in her category.

She clocks in with the second shortest odds at +250, well behind the leader on the Olympic odds boards, Li Wenwen of China.

Women's 87 Kg Weightlifting - Gold Medal

• Li Wenwen +100
• Laurel Hubbard +250
• Tatiana Kashirina +500
• Tamara Salazar +600
• Naryury Perez +800
• Sarah Robles +900
• Emily Campbell +1000

Wenwen is the current world record holder in the snatch, the clean and jerk, and, subsequently, total in the 87kg category.

At the Asian Weightlifting Championships, she put up a 148kg snatch and a 187kg clean and jerk, adding up to a 335kg total.

For Americans, that’s roughly 326 lbs for the snatch, 412 lbs for the clean and jerk, which adds up to a 738 lb total.

Hubbard, by contrast, doesn’t even seem to be particularly close to those numbers.

At the 2019 World Championships in Thailand, an event won by Li Wenwen, Hubbard put up a 131 kg snatch, a 154 kg clean and jerk, and a 285 total.

In fact, Hubbard has lower totals than the people below her on the odds boards too.

Tatiana Kashirina, for example, has +500 odds to win the 87 kg Women’s weightlifting gold medal, but has been putting up totals north of 310 kg for almost a decade at this point.

Laurel Hubbard has never broken even a 300 kg total.

At some point, it becomes clear that the reason Hubbard is favored to the degree that she is in this category is that the betting public seems to believe that she is better at this than she actually is.

One can speculate as to the reasons why people believe this, but the numbers don’t lie - Hubbard shouldn’t be the second favorite in this category.