The women's weightlifting podium address the press at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.
The podium athletes in Laurel Hubbard's event at Tokyo did not speak about her after the event.
Photo by Olympics press conference
  • An Olympics reporter asked women's weightlifting medalists about Laurel Hubbard's participation.
  • Hubbard is the first openly transgender person to compete at an Olympic Games.
  • The question was met with silence. Eventually, American lifter Sarah Robles declined to answer.
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An Olympics reporter was met with an awkward silence when he asked the women's weightlifting podium about Laurel Hubbard.

China's gold medal winner Li Wenwen, Britain's silver medalist Emily Campbell, and Sarah Robles – the bronze medalist of the United States – were speaking at a media event after the conclusion of the +87-kilogram category.

Wenwen set individual and combined snatch (140 kilograms) and clean and jerk (180 kilograms) Olympic records to claim the championship with a 320-kilogram total lift.

Campbell edged Robles by a single kilogram with her total 283-kilogram lift – 37 kilograms behind Wenwen.

The event was also notable because of Laurel Hubbard's participation. The New Zealand lifter failed to record a single lift, but made history as the first openly transgender Olympian at the games.

"There was a historic night here with Laurel Hubbard competing as the first openly transgender in an individual event," one reporter said at the press conference.

"I was just wondering what you felt about that, and what took place in your sport," the reporter asked the podium.

Laurel Hubbard, of New Zealand, waves during the weightlifting event at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.
Laurel Hubbard.
Photo by Stanislav KrasilnikovTASS via Getty Images

British athlete Campbell had previously been speaking, at length, but video suggests the reporter is asking any or all of the athletes for their insights on Hubbard's participation in Tokyo.

At first, nobody answered the reporter.

Wenwen was unfazed, Campbell did not move, and Robles sipped water from the bottle in front of her.

Eight seconds passed before Robles simply said: "No, thank you."

Robles, meanwhile, made her own history as the first American woman to win two Olympic weightlifting medals.

She won bronze at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro for her performance in the +75-kilogram category, and repeated that success this week.

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