As the upcoming Winter Olympic Games approach, more openly queer athletes are competing than ever before in the 102-year history of this event, according to an analysis by Outsports, the American sports site. The tally lists 41 competitors who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, nonbinary, or otherwise queer. Notably, Swedish trans man Elis Lundholm, who will race in the women’s freestyle skiing competition (TheColu.mn reported), is not yet on the list. The Winter Games kick off next Friday in Milan.
At the last Winter Games in Beijing in 2022, Outsports counted 35 queer participants in the lead-up to the competitions (TheColu.mn reported). At the 2018 Games in PyeongChang there were only 14; at 2014 in Sochi, seven. The share of openly queer athletes now sits at about 1.3 to 1.4 percent.
Women Dominate the LGBT Team
As in the previous Olympics, women make up the bulk of the openly queer athletes. In total, there are only eight male LGBTI competitors, i.e., fewer than a fifth. The male share, however, is nearly twice as high as at the last Summer Olympics in Paris, where there were eight queer women for every queer man.
The highest representation comes from the United States and Canada — each country has eight athletes. Finland follows with six. Germany has only one queer athlete: ice hockey player Nina Jobst-Smith. The German-Canadian is dating Ashton Bell, and the two play together for the Vancouver Goldeneyes, a top team in the cross-border PWHL.
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Instagram | The French Guillaume Cizeron is a member of the LGBT team
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Ice hockey accounts for the largest share of the LGBT team: 22 openly queer female players are on board — yet not a single openly queer male hockey player is listed. The only sport in which queer men are the majority is figure skating. Here in Milan, at least five openly queer men and one openly queer woman are set to compete.
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Instagram | Guillaume Cizeron, the French ice dancer, is a member of the LGBT team |
“Outsports” explained that they expect the list to grow during the Games, as it has done at all previous Games after the list was published. “While most male athletes publicly come out through the media (also because there are so few of them), many female athletes publicly come out on social media and consequently fly under the radar of mainstream coverage. Language barriers mean openly queer athletes are easily overlooked at first,” the site noted.
