My hope for the future of sport is that we just stopped caring about gender. Apart from some very minor caveats around taking performance enhancing drugs, can't we just dump this, just not care?

The person who's come out as trans in my mind, is not concerned with performance, because they're taking care of themselves.

The sport they do, is what they love. The vast majority of us who are going to come out as trans are never going to be on the podium. The one or two people who are, are going to be there, because they're truly amazing athletes.

And at the end of the day, I'd prefer not to even be like, "Oh, here's the male, the man who won the race and the top three men and the top three women."

Instead, I'd really just like to say, "Holy cow, here are the top five people who finished first."

It has taken me a long time to realize that I'm not just a weekend warrior. I'm an athlete – I've literally been a professional, teaching kayaking and I've paddled at extremely high levels.

If I could travel back in time, I'd tell my 18-year-old self getting on that plane to go to Nepal, “This is going to be with you for your life. You don't have to be too worried about it. It'll be there when you need it, you can step away, and then you can come back.”

[As told to @Ragi Gupta — continued tomorrow]