Male athlete wins FIRST PLACE in Canadian women's powerlifting championship

A trans-identifying man came in first place at the Canadian Powerlifting Union’s 2023 Western Canadian Championship in Brandon, Manitoba this weekend.

Anne Andres, 40, out lifted his female competitors by over 200lbs to win top honours in the Female Masters Unequipped category. Had he competed in the male division, his performance would still have earned him a spot at the top of the rankings. 

According to results obtained by Reduxx, Andres lifted a total of 597.5 lbs across the squat, bench press, and deadlift events. The second-place lifter, SuJan Gil, finished the competition with a combined 387.5 lbs.

Andres boasted about his win on Instagram. "Keep in mind I turned 40 a week ago so suddenly being master 1 is kind of hollow," he said. "That in mind, I got every masters record and two unofficial world masters records. I don't care about records. I care about being there with my friends."

He went on to suggest that he had messed up his bench press because "the platform was very slick."

"Why is women's bench so bad," Andres asked in a recently unearthed clip from February. "Not compared to me; we all know that I'm a tranny freak, so that doesn't count ... I mean standard bench in powerlifting competition for women, I literally don't understand why it's so bad."

Andres has been widely criticized, yet he continues to be allowed to dominate women in powerlifting. During a March interview with National Review, lifter Kristine Bayntum explained what it was like competing against him.

"I didn't know at the time, but I suspected that I was competing against a trans-identifying male," she said of a 2019 event. "When I was on the podium, I got second, then this person came up and spoke, and it was basically a man's voice."

Bayntum said she was "shocked," but thought it could have been a woman on testosterone. It wasn't until 2023 that she discovered that she had competed against Andres.

"At the time I was just happy to be there so I didn't think much about it," she added, "but once I saw the photo this year I was pretty upset about it."

She slammed the Canadian Powerlifting Union over its policy regarding trans-identifying athletes, pointing out that all you have to do to change genders is fill out a simple form online. Meanwhile, female athletes are routinely warned not to take any performance-enhancing drugs.

When the policy was announced in March, powerlifting coach Avi Silverberg protested by changing his gender to compete in the women's division and proceeding to break records. Andres accused Silverberg of having "malicious intent" with the stunt.