Another First In The Weird & Wacky: It’s a ‘Non-binary’ U.S. Olympic Athlete

Are we going to see a gender normal Olympiad ever again? It was all about transgenders last summer in Tokyo. The United States will host its first ever non-binary Winter Athlete next month in Beijing.

Since this gender craze is all about the pronouns, we’re about to see someone who looks an awful lot like a “he,” but who goes by “they.” Oh, for the good old days of the thrill of the sport and the agony of defeat again. Women were always women, while men used to be men.

Timothy “they” LeDuc is one of four persons named to the 2022 U.S. Olympic Figure Skating team Sunday morning. He became the first openly-gay athlete in America to win gold medals at U.S. pairs events. He also publicly declared his gender confusion by identifying as “nonbinary”, the first U.S.-based athlete to be crowned in any of the disciplines. He’ll likely compete in the house as a plant for four more years.

“Next month they will become the first publicly out non-binary athlete to compete at a Winter Olympics,” writes the hip Brandon Penny of NBC Sports

Jo Yurcaba, also an NBC writer, says LeDuc and “their partner,” Ashley Cain-Gribble made history by qualifying for the Beijing Games, starting Feb. 3.:

“LeDuc, 31, is no stranger to historic firsts — they were the first openly gay athlete to win gold in a U.S. pairs event in 2019 — but making Team USA would be especially meaningful because LeDuc, who is from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, hasn’t always felt welcome in their sport.

“In an interview on the latest episode of NBCLX’s podcast My New Favorite Olympian, they said as a person who ‘exists and really thrives outside of the binary,’ navigating a gendered sport can be complicated.”

LeDuc said some people can’t understand him and are quick to put him in a box because he has the physical characteristics of a boy. “What are you doing?” they ask him.

In fact, “they” once had a tryout with a girl who refused to skate with “them.” And it was her that found things a little weird, not LeDuc. “She thought me being gay was going to be a liability. It was not an option for her in an otherwise great partnership that girl and I could have had.” 

LeDuc was once instructed by a coach to show his masculinity and win. NBC calls this insensitive.

LeDuc’s Christian family is from a traditional evangelical church that tried to change their son, and the NBC story portrays them as the weird people.

At last, in 2016, current skating partner, Cain-Gribble, “accepted them and celebrated their nontraditional partnership.” She never wants them to be seen as “the traditional team,” she said. “They always had the storyline of the male is super masculine and strong and always just to come in and save the girl who is a wilted little flower and is weak, or it was a full-on love story, where obviously a male and a female fall in love with each other.”

His parents now support him, but it’s the figure skating world that “remains rigid in its traditional gender expectations for athletes, LeDuc said, and that’s something they are trying to help change.”

LeDuc fantasizes about a world outside of the binary one at least for today. So naturally, he’s going to be looked at as odd, as peculiar by the greater public. The bizarre, unusual, and the absurd are already accepted by the vast, wild media community. NBC, and other media outlets are quick to accept any LGBT-related issue no matter its radicality. No questions asked.