Female skier who identifies as male to compete against women at Olympics

An openly transgender skier will be competing at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics, but don’t expect any protests from advocates of single-sex women’s sports.

Freestyle skier Elis Lundholm, 23, qualified last month for the Swedish women’s Olympic skiing team. The athlete is a female who identifies as male, but instead of going up against men based on gender identity, Lundholm skis in the female category based on sex at birth.

In other words, Lundholm is a biological woman who competes against women.

This might not seem like a groundbreaking moment in the annals of Olympic history, but the LGBTQ media has nonetheless hailed Lundholm’s participation as historic, cheering the skier as the first openly transgender athlete to compete in the Winter Olympic Games.

OutSports reported that Lundholm will be “the first athlete to compete at a Winter Olympics while publicly identifying as transgender,” as far as the publication is aware, a feat celebrated as a “major milestone in trans sports” by the LGBTQ platform Them.

“Swedish skier Elis Lundholm will make history as the first out trans athlete in a Winter Olympics,” said the LGBTQ Nation headline.

By opting for the women’s field, however, Lundholm may have inadvertently undermined the case of activists who have insisted that transgender athletes must be able to compete in opposite-sex sports based on gender identity.

Foes of female-identifying males in women’s sports have been accused of transphobia, even though they have no objection to male-identifying females participating in either men’s or women’s sports, as long as the athlete hasn’t taken testosterone as part of a gender transition.

Nancy Hogshead, a three-time Olympic swimming champion who has been labeled transphobic for opposing biological males in female sports, emphasized that she’s fine with Lundholm making the Swedish women’s ski team.

“An athlete’s ‘Gender Identity’ is irrelevant here – the only question when determining the athlete’s proper competitive category is the athlete’s SEX,” Hogshead, CEO of Champion Women, posted on X.

An athlete’s “Gender Identity” is irrelevant here - the only question when determining the athlete’s proper competitive category is the athlete’s SEX. #GenderIdeology #olympics #fairness #skiing pic.twitter.com/AM58UbIaQ9

— Nancy Hogshead, JD, Oly (@Hogshead3Au) February 2, 2026

Lundholm, who began identifying as male five years ago, “has never had a problem competing as a woman,” according to an interview with the Swedish publication Sportbladet.

“I have always been treated well,” Lundholm told the outlet.

Jon Pike, professor at the Open University in Milton Keynes, England, said there is “nothing to see here” in terms of fairness in women’s sports.

“Lundholm is female, identifies as trans, uses he/him pronouns and has not gone through medical transition, competes in the female category,” he posted on X.

At the same time, Mr. Pike pointed out that Lundholm isn’t doing the transgender-rights movement any favors by competing based on sex versus identity.

“Lundholm is a walking/skiing refutation of the claim that it’s unreasonable to require TiM [Transgender identifying Male] athletes to compete in their sex category,” he said. “It’s said that this is the equivalent of ‘banning them from sport.’ Lundholm competes in the correct sex category, even though this is not the category into which Lundholm identifies, and has ‘no problem with this.’”

Recent history would suggest that both female- and male-identifying transgender athletes prefer competing in the women’s category at the Olympics.

By making the Swedish team, Lundholm becomes at least the third female-born transgender competitor to participate in the Olympic games, joining Canadian soccer player Quinn and U.S. runner Nikki Hiltz. All three qualified in women’s events.

At least two male-to-female transgender athletes have also represented their countries in women’s Olympic sports: New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard and Canadian archer Stephanie Barrett.

No known transgender athlete has qualified for a men’s Olympics team. Racewalker Chris Mosier was the first – and may be the only – female-born transgender athlete to qualify for and compete in the men’s Olympic trials in 2020.

Two women’s boxers who had been previously disqualified from the female category in international competition won gold medals at the 2024 Paris Olympics, but both are believed to have sexual-development disorders. Neither identifies publicly as transgender.

Over the last decade, scores of male-born athletes who identify as female have made their way into women’s and girls’ sports, spurring a fairness-and-safety backlash that has reached the International Olympic Committee.

IOC President Kirsty Coventry, who took over in June, created a working group on fairness in female sports that is expected to announce its findings in the first half of the year.

“You’ll know that for the new president, Kirsty Coventry of the IOC, protecting the female category is one of her key reforms she wants to bring in,” IOC spokesperson Mark Adams said at a Saturday press conference in Milan.

“I wouldn’t give you a timeline, but I would say that it’s going to be happening I would say shortly, or within the next few months,” Mr. Adams added.

The IOC had previously allowed athletes to compete in the female category as long as they lowered their testosterone, but its revised 2021 framework deferred decisions on transgender eligibility to the international sports governing bodies.