BEIJING — More than a month ago, in the bowels of Bridgestone Arena, Timothy Ledec said he didn't want this moment to be about him.
LeDuc, whose pronoun they are, did not want the narrative to focus on further history. They wanted it to be the beginning of a change, a way of showing queer people that they had the opportunity to "be open and authentic to themselves and everything that makes them unique and still achieve success in the sport." Is."
LeDuc did just that with a scintillating performance at the Capitol Indoor Stadium on Friday.
Skating with partner Ashley Cain-Gribble in the short program of the pairs program, LeDuc became the first openly non-binary athlete to compete at the Winter Olympics—a historic step for LGBTQ representation and visibility in the Games.
“I know that for me, being openly non-binary is possible only because amazing queer people have come before me and laid the groundwork for me,” 31-year-old Leduc said Friday night. "So now I want to do the same for others."
LeDuc's debut in Beijing follows Quinn, a women's football player who recently became the first openly transgender and non-binary person to win an Olympic medal when she earned gold with Canada at the Summer Games.
According to GLAAD and Outsports, a website that covers LGBTQ issues and personality in sports, LeDuc is one of at least 32 LGBTQ athletes competing at the Beijing Games. There were 15 athletes at the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang.
"I think it's amazing," fellow figure skater Jason Brown, who came out as gay last summer, said of the number of LGBTQ athletes competing in Beijing.
"The fact that the visibility is increasing, for other people to come, it's huge. I'm very proud to be a part of it. And I feel so lucky to have everyone who has come before me."
LeDuc has long echoed that sentiment. An Iowa native, he first told his parents at age 18 that he was gay, then came out as non-binary more than a decade later. The term covers people whose gender identity and/or gender expression falls outside the "male" and "female" binary.
At the US Figure Skating Championships, LeDuc spoke at length about struggling to portray masculinity in figure skating, especially in a discipline such as pairs where skaters often play traditional masculine and feminine roles. It just felt "forced", he said.
"It was never authentic to me," LeDuc said. "When I was finally given the tools and shown examples that I could exist outside of it, it all made sense. I finally felt complete in myself."
Realizing that physical characteristics have received a lot of attention when discussing gender expression, LeDuc also noted that they portray elements of both masculinity and femininity. For example, he has a beard but wears makeup during the competition.
LeDuc found a perfect match in 2016 with Cain-Gribble, a former singles skater who had previously opened up about experiencing body-shaming earlier in her career that almost forced her into retirement. While LeDuc aims to prove that athletes should not be limited by their gender expression, Can-Gribble hopes to show that they should not be limited by body type.
"There's a body stereotype, though," she said last month. "And we're definitely trying to fight that."
LeDuc and Cain-Gribble have together won two national championships. They are also trying to break the mold of traditional pair skating, which Cain-Gribble described as "the girl being picked up and the male partner standing there and picking her up."
That's why, in her short program set by Ilan Ashkeri for "The White Crow" on Friday night, she displayed similar skating prowess—performing multiple moves in a single move, rather than filling stereotypical gender roles. Happened. He was rewarded with a score of 74.13, good for seventh place. The competition will continue with a longer program on Saturday night.
"I think both Ashley and I have had to go through a lot of different things — times when people haven't told us, or we haven't," LeDuc said on Friday. "So for both Ashley and I, we had something to prove today, I think. And hopefully the people watching us think there's room for them to get into figure skating, and for them to celebrate." To be able to celebrate is what makes them unique and different."