Laurel Hubbard is both a formidable weightlifter and a fiendish human conundrum. Born in New Zealand in 1978, she lived until her early thirties as Gavin, the child of a former mayor of Auckland. Then she decided to transition to become female and to compete as an elite athlete using her reassigned gender.

The upshot? A labyrinthine legal and ethical mess, for which the Commonwealth Games offer just a fleeting platform. Come the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, Hubbard is likely to present such an insoluble dilemma that her case will make Bleak House’s Jarndyce versus Jarndyce seem a pushover.

Here in Australia, she escaped a full trial in the court of public opinion by dubious virtue of injuring herself. Just as Hubbard tried to perform a snatch lift of 132kg, which threatened to set a mark that none of her rivals could hope to emulate, her elbow dislocated, bringing her moment under the cameras’ glare to a gruesome end.

The sadness of Hubbard’s story is that her premature exit could easily be seen as a mercy. A gold medal, which looked hers to seize after she lifted a weight 7kg heavier than her nearest challenger at the first attempt, only risked magnifying her pariah status.