42-year-old Turaeva, a six-time world powerlifting champion and eight-time European powerlifting champion, described the experience of being prevented from boarding a plane from St Petersburg to her home city of Krasnodar as humiliating. The Russian athlete said that security staff believed she was actually a man posing as a woman and asked her all sorts of private and intimate question in order to establish her gender. Anna Turaeva’s appearance has indeed become very masculine after years of bodybuilding and powerlifting training, but she considers herself 100% female and tried explaining to the airline representative that they were wrong to ask her to prove her gender, especially since it was clearly stated on her passport.
