Does nature make mistakes? The answer may seem easy but it is not. Obviously it does. The issue is the criterion by which we determine whether something is wrong or right. In any case, everything needs change. A change that nature itself has taken care of.
If all of the above sounds strange to you, it's because you do not know the story of Erika Sineger. Ή by Eric Sineger. No, they are not relatives, nor is it just a synonym. Erica Sineger and Eric Sineger are the same person. And, in order not to rush, to draw conclusions, no this change has nothing to do with the sexual choices of the central hero of our story, but with a mistake of hers nature.
You see, when Erica was born, everyone thought a little girl had come to life. Over time, however, everyone realized that something was wrong. Until the big secret (or the mistake of nature, which we talked about earlier) was revealed before their eyes.
The birth of a girl who was… a boy
June 19, 1948 in Agsdorf, a beautiful mountainous and basically rural area of Austria, a poor peasant family is preparing to have its fourth child. The father wanders anxiously out of the room where mom is trying to help his wife give birth. Suddenly the cry of the newborn baby makes his heart beat fast. He forcibly opens the door and enters the room. With the agony painted on his face, he looks at his mother and asks her: "what is it"? She tries to take a breath and after looking at the baby between the legs, she looks at him and says with confidence: "she is a girl"!
The father, angry, forcibly closes the door behind him and leaves. He was sure that after three girls the boy's time had come. The baby's genitals, however, left no room. He had just had his fourth baby girl.
As the years went by, little Erica grew up, however, she just didn't look like a little girl. And not only in appearance or physique but also in habits. In vain her mother tried to put her in the kitchen to help her with cooking or housework in general. Erika wanted to go to the farm with her father. She was so's a little girl (as everyone called her) that she was the one who made the tractor if something went wrong, she undertook to repair whatever was damaged in the house and she cut wood and made small furniture.
Everyone was looking at Erika strangely, who the older he got, the more he looked like a boy. And precisely because she did not look like a little girl but a little boy, her father quickly discovered that he had the strength and endurance of a boy. So he "pushed" her to the track where she proved to be much faster than any other girl.
Erika, however, never "fell in love" with the track. He wanted to do ski. And somehow her father enrolled her in a local club where from the first lesson Erika left many meters behind her even the greatest talent of the team. The coaches were stunned in front of her natural talent and the huge endurance she had.
The world title and the exams that turned a life upside down
Erika gives her first official fight at the age of 12 and there, now, everyone discovers that they are dealing with a rare case of an athlete. It is indicative that he started a series of races (something like a championship) in 314th place and finally managed to come out first and in fact… with a difference! In the following years he swept one medal after another both locally and nationally. At the same time, however, with her athletic life, Erika seems quite confused in her personal life. The boys leave her coldly indifferent, while the girls attract her interest. In addition, all girls of that age talk about menstruation. Erika, however, does not have something similar and that makes her feel bad.
In 1966, at the age of 18, the time had come for world recognition. Erika together with the Austrian national team participates in the world ski championship organized in Chile. All Austrian hopes for a gold medal had "fallen" on Erika and she does not disappoint anyone. He makes an amazing race and wins the world title in the descent against the amazing French skier Mariel Getzel who was the undisputed favorite.
A few days after her triumph, Erika Sineger returns to her hometown where a reserved welcome awaits her. Her roommates welcome her with heroic honors and Erika lives her own fairy tale. There was no time for many festivals, however, as the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble in southeastern France were ahead. There, inside Getzel's headquarters, Erica wanted to win three gold medals.
She immediately begins her preparation, with hard daily training in order to reach the level she wanted. In 1967, however, a few months before the start of the winter games, everything fell apart. THE International Olympic Committee instructs all federations to submit their athletes to various examinations and tests. One of these tests that Erika did shows something strange. The 1966 world champion has some chromosomes that only a man could have. It immediately means an alarm and even more and more specialized examinations begin.
That's the final blow. Erica not only has some chromosomes that only men have but she has all the male ones genitals which, however, by a mistake of nature, instead of growing outwards, developed inwards and were trapped there, making Erica look like a woman when in fact she was a man!
A difficult decision that brought a man face to face with himself
Erika is invited to go to the headquarters of the Austrian Ski Association. There awaits her a committee of six scientists and experts in the sport who announce that her career is over! Before she recovers from the shock, they give her a letter stating that she is retiring for personal reasons and ask her to sign it. She tries to understand what had happened (we are talking about a young man who had just turned 19) and refuses to sign.
Then one of the experts on the committee, a urologist, gives her two options. The first is to go at the expense of the Federation to have an operation and with the help of hormones to turn her into a woman. But not a "normal woman" since she did not have a woman's genitals. She could, however, retain the world title she had won, retain the privileges she had been given, and slowly the story would be forgotten.
The second option was, again at the expense of the Federation, to do surgery but in order to "liberate" the male genitals and with the corresponding hormonal treatments to become a normal man who could have a family. In this case, however, she would lose the world title she won, all her privileges would be taken away and she would have to deal with it on her own with the press that had already started and was "raging".
After a difficult battle with herself, Erica made her decision. On January 2, 1968, a dressed woman enters a clinic in Innsbruck. Within the next six months, he underwent four consecutive and extremely painful surgeries and at the same time underwent heavy hormonal treatments. By the time this process was over (she herself had said in her autobiography that she felt lonely, hopeless, confused, depressed and afraid), Erica had now "transformed" into Eric Sineger, a charming young man. Eric left the clinic dressed in an elegant suit and driving a Porsche! He was now another man.
He tried to return to competitive action this time as a male athlete, however, all he found in front of him were obstacles as the scandal was great. No coach wanted to take him on and the Austrian Federation was constantly ignoring his requests. Eric, however, did not give up. He tried to train on his own, watching and copying the movements of male skiers on TV. He tried but always found obstacles.
Finally, shortly before he turned 22, he decided to give up any effort. He married the love of his life, Renata and opened a ski school for young children which he maintains to this day. From his marriage he had a daughter. As he has jokingly said, the first thing he did when he was informed that he had a baby girl was to look at her very carefully between her legs to make sure that she really is a baby girl!