Who is Ricci Tres? Trans skateboarder is dad of 3 who was rejected from Olympics qualifiers because he had TOO MUCH testosterone
Ricci Tres, also known as Ricci and Tres, was born as Richard Batres to Guatemalan parents. The 29-year-old biological male - who identifies as a woman - is a divorced Navy father of three who was rejected from the women's Olympic Qualifiers last year because their testosterone levels were too high, as reported by the DailyMail. Tres beat a 13-year-old Shiloh Catori to take first place in a women’s skateboarding contest held in New York on Saturday, June 25, and won the women’s division of The Boardr Open, taking a $500 prize back home. Tres came in first out of six competitors, of which four were under the age of 17, with the youngest being 10-year-old Juri Iikura.
Shiloh, who won the event last year, insisted that she is “not at all upset” with the result and said Ricci should be able to compete.
However, others, including fellow skater Taylor Silverman, said it was unfair to have to compete against someone who has evolved as a man and is bigger and stronger than their competitors. Last year, Tres attempted to compete in the Women’s Street USA Skateboarding National Championships to qualify for the Olympics by submitting a virtual run on Instagram but was turned down by the International Olympic Committee, according to the news outlet.
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Before she started taking hormones, Tres served four years in the US Navy as a second-class machinist corporal on the USS Abraham Lincoln. As Batres, she married Hannah and the couple went on to have three children, the youngest of whom is an infant. Ricci and her ex-wife are now divorced, but they were still living together and co-parenting in Los Angeles last year. Her three children call her “mom” and tell her she’s “pretty,” she revealed in an interview with USA Skateboarding’s Robert Brink last November.
“I’m 28, I have three children, I’m married, I served my time in the military, I own a company. I’ve decided that I like being pretty and sweet. So everything that goes with it is female. I love female bodies. I think it’s a work of art," she said. "I know I’ll never be a woman because women are wonderful, they have babies and they create life and do all these amazing things. I’ll never have that ability, but I feel like a woman."
“I would have liked to have been born that way, so I’m going to try to fill that picture in the best way I can for myself, and that pretty much means being as cute as possible,” Tres continued.
Tres also recently shared a video of her father yelling at her, "I can’t do anything because I’m a woman?! F**k you!". Besides, she has shared multiple photos of her as a man serving on the USS Abraham Lincoln and posing with her then-pregnant ex-wife. During the interview, Tres also mentioned that other transgender athletes need to take more hormones to meet gender category requirements because it “mutilates” their bodies.
“You can’t ask an elite professional athlete to compromise their health. Aside from explaining the transition as a feeling of enlightenment, it has nothing to do with your testosterone levels. It’s a matter of choice and feeling. And you’ve finally decided to be yourself,’ she said. “I’m really happy about where I am. It was only with this whole Olympic standards thing that I had to reconsider where I was going with all this."
The International Olympic Committee has not reacted to Ricci’s comments, and Team USA is yet to respond as of Monday.
On Monday afternoon, Ricci uploaded a video telling fans not to “get angry at what other people say". “I have been skateboarding for 11 years and have been competing for several years. I have competed in three different competitions with trans women, two of which I have placed second. In the last series of competitions I did for Red Bull, I came second," she said.