190 - From Addict to Champion to Activist, with April Hutchinson

Gender: A Wider Lens

Sasha Ayad and Stella O'Malley

Health & Fitness, Society & Culture, Mental Health

4.6 • 961 Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2024

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sasha & Stella welcome April Hutchinson — former team Canada powerlifter, North American deadlift record holder, fairness for women in sports advocate and grateful recovering alcoholic — to discuss her incredible journey from battling alcohol addiction to becoming a world-class powerlifter. During COVID, she turned to powerlifting as part of her recovery, and within a short period, she achieved record-breaking lifts, catapulting her to elite status in the sport holding national records, an extraordinary feat given her short time in the sport. However, her career took a dramatic turn.

In this episode, April recounts the controversy she faced in the powerlifting world. After discovering that a male-to-female transgender athlete was competing against women, she felt compelled to speak out driven by her commitment to truth and fairness. What followed was a tumultuous battle with the Canadian Powerlifting Union that led to her suspension, highlighting the tension between truth-telling, fairness in sports, and the broader societal debates around gender.

April shares the personal and professional consequences she faced, the courage it took to stand by her convictions, and her fight for fairness in women’s sports. Her story is a powerful testament to resilience, truth-telling, and standing up for what’s right, no matter the cost.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Stella O'Malley, a psychotherapist in Ireland.
0:04.4	And I'm Sasha Ayyad, an adolescent therapist in the United States.
0:08.6	And this is Gender, a wider lens, a podcast dedicated to the shifting concepts around gender in our contemporary culture.
0:16.0	Through in-depth interviews, personal stories, and psychological exploration, we seek to open up the discourse around this hot button issue.
0:25.0	Join us as we look at gender from a wider lens.
0:29.0	Hey Stella.
0:33.0	How's it going Sasha?
0:35.0	How are you?
0:36.0	I'm well. I was so excited today to talk to April Hutchinson, PowerLifter, and
0:41.4	remarkable lady.
0:42.8	It was super fun for me especially because I lift weights and it was really cool to talk to her.
0:47.4	She was amazing.
0:48.4	Yeah, and you know the two of you speak about the weights that she lived or like a kind of look on a gog
0:56.5	but clearly she's phenomenal and she started at a very late age but she's an extraordinary woman.
1:02.4	Yeah so I mean April as you'll hear tells us about how she got into power lifting really as part of
1:09.8	recovery I mean she ended up in rehab at death's door. She tells us the story.
1:15.0	And she basically got herself out of this like really dire situation by starting to lift during COVID. And then within a short period of time she went on to hold records.
1:27.8	I mean this woman's strength is unbelievable and so we kind of contextualize that a bit because I do think if like an
1:36.1	average person is listening to this you throw around these numbers like 300
1:40.5	pounds 500 pounds you know 200, and people may not just understand how unbelievably remarkable that is,
1:48.2	especially in the short period of time after she started lifting.
1:52.6	Yeah, everyone was one of those people listening going,
	...

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