A transgender woman who won gold in the 2018 UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championships has faced a fierce backlash including death threats since her victory a month ago.

Rachel McKinnon from Victoria, British Columbia, became the first transgender woman to win a world champion title.

She told CTV News she wasn鈥檛 able to celebrate her win immediately because of the attention surrounding her gender identity.

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鈥淚t鈥檚 hard to get death threats and not read that as hurtful. It's hard to read tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of comments of being a woman and someone calling you a man,鈥� McKinnon said.

Jen Wagner-Assali, who finished third in the race, called the results 鈥渄efinitely not fair鈥� on Twitter.

When McKinnon saw the tweet, she looked at her race history and found she had competed against Wagner-Assali a number of times and had lost in most of their encounters.

Three days later, Wagner-Assali tweeted that she respected McKinnon鈥檚 right to 鈥渃ompete within the rules,鈥� but she was fighting to change those rules.

Trans athletes have been able to compete in Olympic-eligible sports since 2003.

McKinnon said she recognizes people are worried that transgender people may disrupt women鈥檚 sports, but she said there hasn鈥檛 been a transgender person who鈥檚 won an Olympic medal since the rules were changed.

鈥淭his panic that trans athletes have this advantage just isn鈥檛 borne out in any evidence that we have,鈥� she explained.

McKinnon also meets all the Union Cyclist International criteria to race against other women.

"Rachel seems to have competed within those rules and she won so she should be recognized for her sporting accomplishment,鈥� explained Paul Melia with the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sports.

With files from CTV Vancouver鈥檚 Ben Miljure