First transgender athlete to medal at Olympics wins gold

The first transgender athlete won Olympic gold on Thursday, marking a historic achievement, but one that’s also bittersweet.

Quinn, along with the Canadian soccer team, played a long match against Sweden, with a tied result moving into a tense penalty shootout, which Canada won. More openly trans and non-binary athletes have competed in the Tokyo Olympic Games than ever before as intense debates over trans people in athletics have frustratingly swept through schools and statehouses in the U.S.

Quinn’s the first openly trans athlete to participate in the Olympics after the International Olympic Committee changed its rules in 2004 to allow transgender athletes to compete in the Games. But they were followed by others competing in weightlifting and BMX racing later on in the Games.

Quinn’s one of at least 181 openly queer athletes at the Tokyo Games, more than three times the number who participated in the Rio Games, according to Outsports.

Gold medallists Canada after the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games women’s final football match.
Credit: TIZIANA FABI / AFP via Getty Images

Although Quinn’s said they’re proud to see their name on the soccer roster, they’re also sad past Olympians like them couldn’t be open about their identities, Quinn revealed on Instagram a day before the Tokyo Olympics began. “I feel proud seeing ‘Quinn’ up on the lineup and on my accreditation. I feel sad knowing there were Olympians before me unable to live their truth because of the world,” they wrote.

Quinn competed in the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, where they and their team won a bronze medal, but they weren’t out yet.

In a September 2020 Instagram post, Quinn told the world they were trans. While they’ve been out with their loved ones for years, part of Quinn’s motivation to come out online is to support queer people who may not see people like themselves on social media.

“Instagram is a weird space. I wanted to encapsulate the feelings I had towards my trans identity in one post but that’s really not why anyone is on here, including myself,” Quinn wrote. “So instead I want to be visible to queer folks who don’t see people like them on their feed. I know it saved my life years ago.”

Quinn’s accomplishment comes as trans and nonbinary athletes, like Olympic weightlifter Laurel Hubbard and Olympic skateboarder Alana Smith, respectively, gain more mainstream recognition because of their presence in the Games.

Despite gains for trans athletes on the Olympic stage, conservatives in the U.S. continue to pass bills to stop trans teens from playing on sports teams that align with their gender.

“When trans kids have access to gender-affirming spaces at school, like a locker room, a restroom, a sports team, they are 25 percent less likely to commit suicide,” Annie Lieberman, director of policy programs for Athlete Ally, an LGBTQ athletic advocacy nonprofit, told ABC News.

The hurdles transgender athletes face to play on the teams that make them feel the safest makes Quinn’s gold medal in the Olympics all the more impactful.