'Athletic
participation has been the road other marginalized groups have used as a
pathway to greater visibility and human rights coverage, and it's past
time we transfolks did so as well.' ---TransGriot , June 24, 2012
The Stockholm Consensus that allows transpeople to participate in the Olympic Games has been in place since 2004. Since it was approved by the IOC we have had two winter Olympiads (2006, 2010) and three Summer ones (2004, 2008 and 2012) pass without an open trans athlete participating on their nation's winter or summer Olympic teams.
Keelin Godsey of the US, who did make the US Pan Am Games squad in 2011 has tried twice in 2008 and 2012 to be that first out trans athlete to make that history along with Kristin Worley of Canada, who attempted to make the Canadian Olympic track cycling team in 2008.
But as of yet our dream of a trans Olympian hasn't happened. The new IOC rules were enacted far too late for a trans athlete to make an appearance in Athens and the first winter games in Torino two years later. Beijing, Vancouver and London came and went with no trans Olympian sightings and it doesn't look like it will happen as the Olympic cauldron is lit at Sochi either.
Maybe the international trans* community will have better luck seeing one of our own two years from now in Rio or in 2018 at the Winter Games in Pyeongchang
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