First non-binary athlete to compete in Winter Olympics
US skater Timothy LeDuc will become the first non-binary athlete to participate in a winter Olympics when he takes to the ice with partner Ashley Cain-Gribble on Friday as new guidelines aim to make future Games more inclusive for trans athletes.
LeDuc, who uses the gender-neutral pronouns they and them, was also the first openly gay athlete to win gold in a US pairs event at the national championships in 2019.
Some 35 LGBT athletes are competing in this year’s winter Games in Beijing – a record for any Olympics.
The summer games in Tokyo, held just six months ago due to Covid delays, also saw new ground being broken for transgender and non-binary athletes. New Zealand’s Laurel Hubbard became the first transgender athlete to compete in the Games and Canadian footballer Quinn became the first transgender, non-binary medallist as their team won gold.
New diversity guidelines announced by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in November also aim to make the Games more inclusive by ending reliance on testosterone levels to decide which athletes are eligible to compete in male or female events.
Instead, they detail 10 broad themes (including inclusion, fairness and harm prevention) that sports federations can use to define competition categories. “[It] moves us on from just considering testosterone,” said IOC medical and scientific director Richard Budgett at a news conference in November 2021 “What we’re really interested in is the outcome.”
“You should not have to choose between who you are and the sports you love,” Liz Ward, director of programmes at LGBT charity Stonewall told FRANCE 24.
“We welcome the IOC’s most recent framework on fairness and inclusion. It places trans and intersex people at the heart of decision-making about their own participation in sport.”
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Source : france24
