Non-binary representation continues to grow across all major areas of interest—media, art, sports—with Olympic figure skating close on the horizon. Figure skater (or more accurately, pair skater) Timothy LeDuc could be making history at this year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing as the first openly nonbinary athlete to compete.
LeDuc, an Iowa native who has been skating since they were 12 years old, is now 31 and has their sights set on the 2022 Olympics with skating partner Ashley Cain-Gribble. The pair has competed together since 2016. And though LeDuc’s participation in the Olympics would set a precedent for all games to come, they want to make it clear that it’s about more than just labels.
In a recent piece by CNN, LeDuc says their hope is that the narrative isn’t focused entirely on the label of “first out nonbinary person” to reach the Olympics; rather, they hope this opens the door for more queer people to be open in sports and thereby achieve the same levels of success. “We’ve always been here, we’ve always been a part of sports. We just haven’t always been able to be open,” says the athlete.
It’s also important to note that LeDuc isn’t part of the masses of teenagers that tend to crowd Olympic teams. The 31-year-old is considered on the older side for Olympic competitors—seemingly the result of ageism traditionally seen in the Games. Though after a period of years where the world seemed to only watch super-young athletes compete for medals, it seems we’re starting to see a shift towards older competitors.
But even more touching about LeDuc’s rise to success is that, like many others in the queer community, they grew up in a palce of conservative thinking, values, and prejudices. Experiences that would have dissuaded other athletes—including verbal abuse, blatant discrimination, and other forms of serious bigotry (e.g. a group of church members attempting to “pray the gay away”)—seemed to fuel LeDuc to continue competing.
And of course, partnering up with Cain-Gribble to reinvent traditional skating dynamics and also having a solid support system helped the athlete power through hate and misunderstanding. “They weren’t broken. They didn’t need to be fixed because there really wasn’t anything wrong with them,” says LeDuc’s father, Mike. “We knew growing up and observing and just knowing the development and putting pieces together—this wasn’t their choice. This was who they were,” (via Out).
Image courtesy of social media
