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.”
‘Sex testing’ a violation of human rights
Before competing in the 2021 Olympics, footballer Quinn announced they were using gender-neutral pronouns and adopting their surname as a mononym. In the sports world, "I am considered maybe one of the most digestible versions of what it means to be trans," Quinn told their club website in October 2020.
While not all transgender athletes undergo medical or surgical gender-reassignment procedures, those who do can face harsh penalties under the current IOC guidelines, introduced in 2015 and still in place at this year’s Beijing Games.
Typically, those who transition from female to male can compete in male events “without restriction” as they are not considered to have an unfair competitive advantage.
But athletes who transition from male to female must declare their female gender identity a minimum of four years before competing and demonstrate that their total testosterone level is below 10 nanomoles per litre of blood (nmol/l) for 12 months prior to any event and during the competition.
While males have higher levels of the hormone then females, the “normal” ranges for each sex are disputed by experts.
“Sex testing” practices that women athletes go through to prove their eligibility to compete have been deemed “invasive and unnecessary” violations of their right to privacy and dignity by Human Rights Watch.
The testosterone rule has meant that intersex athletes, such as South African runner Caster Semenya and Indian sprinter Dutee Chand, have been excluded from competing at the highest levels of their sports.
Born with both male and female characteristics at birth but raised as women, both athletes have testosterone levels judged too high to compete in women’s events.
In 2018, World Athletics introduced rules for intersex athletes competing in races between 400 metres and one mile, forcing Semenya to take testosterone-reducing drugs or be banned from competing.
Old-school attitudes in ‘every sport’
The ICO hopes its new guidelines, to be introduced in March 2022 on an opt-in basis for each Olympic sport, will make the Games more inclusive.
But in figure skating, questions of gender extend beyond who can compete. The sport traditionally adheres to rigid gender roles that define what competitors can wear and the romantic storylines typically performed in male-female routines. This is the first year that female skaters will compete in the “women’s” category rather than one for “ladies”.
There are also still taboos around LGBT ice skaters, as seen when French figure skater Guillaume Cizeron come out as gay in an Instagram post in May 2020.
Just over 18 months later, he skated a couples dance routine at the Finlandia Trophy tournament with partner Gabriella Papadakis. “The French are classy, but cold. The partner is gay and it cannot be hidden,” former international figure skating judge Alexander Vedenin commented to MatchTV, following their performance.
“[His comment] was just unbelievable” Olympic figure skating choreographer Benoît Richaud told FRANCE 24. “So many people are gay in our sport. It’s important to show the younger generation that it’s normal and not to be hidden.”
Cizeron and Papadakis have since gone on to win their first Olympic gold at this year’s Games, and Cizeron is one of nine openly LGBT competing ice skaters, including LeDuc.
Despite a growing public LGBT presence, the fact that the sport only now has its first non-binary Olympic competitor “shows how old school we are”, Richaud said.
“But let's be real – It's not just figure skating, it’s probably every sport.”
‘A catalyst for change’
Challenging gender stereotypes is something LeDuc and their partner Cain-Gribble were keen to do, even before knowing LeDuc would be the winter Olympics’ first non-binary competitor.
The pair often perform in matching unitards – both wearing trousers – and avoid traditional masculine-feminine roles in their choreography.
"It has nothing to do with Ashley being married to someone else ... (or) me being gay. It just had everything to do with us both being such strong, amazing athletes, and that we didn't want to diminish either one of our amazing abilities on the ice,” LeDuc told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview leading up to the Games.
Richaud agrees there is room for a “more modern approach” to ice-skating that challenges traditional definitions of beauty and grace. Doing so in his own work has been successful – Kaori Sakamoto skated his choreography to win bronze in the 2022 women’s singles free skating on Thursday.
LeDuc and Cain-Gribble will find out if they win a medal on Friday. But for some, their impact at the Games has already been meaningful.
“It’s been inspiring to see so many athletes speak up for LGBTQ+ rights at both last year’s Olympics and this year’s Winter Olympics,” Ward said. “We’re incredibly excited to see athletes like Timothy LeDuc excel at the sports they love while making history along the way. Sport has always been a powerful catalyst for change.”
