This year’s Winter Olympics are set to be the queerest in history—and by a significant margin. At least 33 out LGBTQ2S+ athletes will be in Beijing for the 2022 Winter Games beginning on Feb. 4, more than doubling the number who competed in the 2018 Winter Olympics.
The athletes will compete in eight different sports, with the majority participating in figure skating and hockey, according to the LGBTQ2S+ news site Outsports. An influx of out queer men will be part of this year’s games: 11 athletes, compared to only four in 2018. (Before 2018, there were none.) Eight of the 11 men are figure skaters, while queer women are dominating hockey, with 11 players in competition.
To be included in Outsports’ list of Winter Olympians, athletes must have come out publicly in the media, be clearly out on their public-facing social media channels or have confirmed their identity with the publication.
The increase in LGBTQ2S+ Winter Olympians follows an upward trend of queer and trans participants in the Olympics overall. Last year’s Tokyo Summer Olympics hosted a record-breaking 186 out athletes, more than triple the number of participants in the 2016 Rio Games.
In another historic first, U.S. figure skater Timothy LeDuc will be the first non-binary athlete to compete in the Winter Olympics. LeDuc is vying for the gold in the pairs competition with their longtime skating partner Ashley Cain-Gribble. They hope their story gives people a different perspective on queer athletes.
“My hope is that the narrative shifts more to, ‘Queer people can be open and successful in sports,’” LeDuc told NBCSports. “We’ve always been here, we’ve always been a part of sports. We just haven’t always been able to be open.”
That’s been the case for figure skater Lewis Gibson from the U.K. team. He hasn’t hidden the fact he’s gay (based on his Instagram posts), but he hadn’t discussed the subject in the media until recently. He finally spoke about his sexuality in a Jan. 26 interview with Outsports, citing the “many trailblazers” who forged a path for him to be unapologetically himself, including French Olympic figure skater Guillaume Cizeron and American Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon.
“More recently, I’m more free to talk about it,” Gibson told the publication. “I’ve seen so many people who have gone before me and just living their truth and being so authentic when they perform in their sport and really just wanting that for myself as well.”
If countries were to be awarded for most LGBTQ2S+ athletes at the Winter Olympics, Canada would win gold with nine athletes. The United States would get silver with six, and bronze would go to Great Britain with four. Other countries with competing LGBTQ2S+ athletes include France, Sweden and the Czech Republic.
For some athletes, competing in the Winter Olympics is also about advocating for equality in their home countries. Olympic snowboarder Sarka Pancochova, who married partner Kaileen Barley in an intimate ceremony in Washington last year, hopes to bring more focus on marriage equality in the Czech Republic. The couple originally wanted to wait to get married in the country of Pancochova’s birth, but same-sex marriage is still not legal there.
“It’s always an honor to be able to represent my country at the Olympics, and also represent the LGBTQ community and push for gay marriage in Czech Republic,” she told Outsports. “It has been on my mind constantly!”
In Women’s Skeleton, two of the out sliders are actually dating each other. Belgium’s Kim Meylemans and Brazil’s Nicole Silveira will be competing against each other in Beijing. The two met three years ago and recently went public as a couple in a December Instagram post.
There are a handful of LGBTQ2S+ athletes to keep a close eye on in particular, as they are expected to dominate in their competition. U.S. speedskater Brittany Bowe has a strong chance to win a medal based on her performance in the Olympic trial. Bisexual Dutch speedskater Ireen Wüst is the most decorated LGBTQ2S+ Olympian, with five gold medals—one for every year she’s competed since 2006. Wüst is expected to continue her streak.
Meanwhile, French figure skater Cizeron, who won silver in 2018 with his skating partner, Gabriella Papadakis, is a favourite to win gold. Cizeron is a four-time World Champion.
The Winter Olympics will take place from Feb. 4 to 20.
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