Only the sky was the limit when Yvonne Buschbaum soared to big heights as one of the leading women’s pole vaulters in Germany.
Now the sky is wide open for Buschbaum, who feels the lightness of being after revealing her transsexuality last year and undergoing a gender change to Balian Buschbaum since then.
“Courage is the road to freedom. I woke up in complete freedom today. The sky is wide open,” a recent diary entry on his Web site said.
Buschbaum is not ready yet for interviews, as “I am still flying on my clouds of freedom and won’t land until the end of November, at the earliest.”
The operations have also taken a toll on the 28-year-old.
“He is still a little weak from the surgery. But he can get up and is upbeat that he can leave for home on the weekend,” Buschbaum’s former coach Herbert Czingon said.
A year has passed since Buschbaum revealed that she felt like a man trapped in a woman’s body and would undergo the gender change to find her personal freedom.
She appeared in television talkshows and also won respect on the athletics scene for her courage.
But the medical implications of the gender change — the use of doping substances — required Buschbaum to quit pole vaulting, with European championship bronze medals from 1998 and 2002 the best results for the athlete with a personal best of 4.7m.
The shortly-cropped hair always made Buschbaum look boyish, but now facial hair and muscles are growing, and the voice is deeper. Buschbaum also has a new ID card as Balian Buschbaum.
“Some friends said happy birthday. As if the first testosterone shot was my second birthday. It was the start of a new life,” she said in her diary shorty before last Christmas as the treatment started.
The use of testosterone has also given him a unique outlook at the doping issue because “I am living these changes” through the use of the forbidden steroid.
“I felt like an over-bred pitbull,” Buschbaum recently told the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung, saying he was far more aggressive in training and could jump with poles Yvonne Buschbaum only dreamt of using.
Buschbaum is keeping fit through this training for an upcoming new role as pole vault coach.
“I wanted to leave my sport behind, but I am more addicted to this drug pole vault than I thought,” he said.
The sport may stay the same but Buschbaum will be a different person once the gender change is complete.
“The journey continues,” he said in September ahead of another operation.
Yu Yao-hsing on Tuesday nabbed Taiwan’s only goal in the final round of qualifiers for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup, as they fell 3-1 to Sri Lanka at Taipei Municipal Stadium. Early goals from Sri Lanka in the first half left Taiwan struggling to get on the board, and Christopher Tiao’s own goal at 53 minutes sealed the team’s fate in the third round of qualifiers. While acknowledging that the defeat, Taiwan’s sixth in Group D, was disappointing, head coach Matt Ross said he saw reasons to stay positive about the team’s development. “There were lots of positive signs in terms of the
Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli yesterday vowed to “keep raising the bar” after winning the Japanese Grand Prix to become the youngest driver in Formula One history to lead the championship standings. The 19-year-old Italian took advantage of a mid-race safety car to jump into the lead after a dreadful start from pole position, crossing the line ahead of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. Antonelli’s Suzuka victory came two weeks after the first grand prix win of his career in China, and sent him top of the championship standings after three races, nine points ahead of team-mate George Russell. Mercedes are struggling to
INDIGESTION: Italy failed to qualify for the World Cup for a third consecutive time after a 4-1 defeat to Bosnia on penalties in a loss Gattuso said was ‘difficult to digest’ Coach Graham Arnold on Tuesday challenged his players to “shock the world” after Iraq became the 48th and final team to qualify for the FIFA World Cup with a nerve-shredding 2-1 win over Bolivia in an intercontinental playoff in Mexico, as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Sweden and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) also secured their places at the finals. Iraq, whose preparations were disrupted by the war in the Middle East, sealed their first appearance at the finals in 40 years and are to play in Group I against France, Senegal and Norway. Goals from Ali al-Hamadi
Teng Kai-wei, the only Taiwanese player on an opening-day roster in this year’s Major League Baseball (MLB) season, took his first win of the year with the Houston Astros in his season debut. Teng entered in relief in the top of the fifth inning against the Los Angeles Angels on Saturday, with the Astros trailing 5-0. He pitched 2-1/3 scoreless innings with two strikeouts, as Houston scored 11 runs during his outing to snatch an 11-9 comeback victory. The win is the Astros’ first of the season and the third of Teng’s MLB career. “It’s my first time pitching for the Astros, so
RSS