In Queerest Olympics Ever, One Bronze Medal Stands Out
I didn’t get hit once and all the boxers are making me cry.
The Paris Olympics featured the traditional nationalist competition between countries wanting to “win” the Olympics. The USA and China tied in gold medals, though the USA won the point count by winning more silver and bronze. But victories aren’t only counted by nation states, and at these very international games sometimes borders matter less than other things. Pacific island nations, for example, often cheer on each others’ victories. But they aren’t the only ones cheering across borders.
Queer and trans folk around the world often take an interest in the athletes from our community, and Outsports even collects a database of all the the out LGBTQ competitors. While JK Rowling and 99 percent of conservative media were harassing two cis women boxers, 195 QT athletes represented 26 nations and none, but we’ll get to that. That makes this the queerest Olympics ever, beating out the total of 186 out athletes in Tokyo and, if Queer Nation granted citizenships, would be the 14th largest national contingent at the games. That hypothetical Queer Nation would also have placed sixth in the medal count, tying the Netherlands with 15 golds but falling neatly between the Dutch and host country France on the strength of silvers and bronzes.
One happy bit of news is that in both golds and overall medal count, Queer Nation beat out every single country in the world that criminalizes same-sex boinking. The only bad news seems to be that people competing in the men’s events seem a little underqueered compared to the women. Can’t we at least get a few interested in the Greco-Roman wrestling? Yr Wonkette is just asking.
Still, if you yaoi/bara fetishists can stop thinking about sweaty wrestlers for a minute there’s a lot more to talk about with this hugely queer games. First we should talk about the firsts, a number of which have been set. One boxer representing the Philippines became the first out trans man to compete in the Olympics, Hergie Bacyadan. Paris also saw the first out non-binary competitor (they also identify as transgender) in any Olympics, US middle distance runner Nikki Hiltz. [Correction! Hiltz is the first to represent the USA, but Canadian soccer star Quinn represented their country in Tokyo, winning gold.] Neither medaled, though Hiltz reached the final, finishing seventh behind a fast field led by Faith Kipyegon of Kenya, who won her third Olympic 1500m gold in a row (something no woman has ever done).
Of course there are many medalists to celebrate as well. Türkiye has its first out athlete in Ebrar Karakurt, and power politician İbrahim Melih Gökçek tweeted out a video and implied he knew that Karakurt’s women’s indoor volleyball teammate Melissa Vargas (also in the video) was also playing for Queer Nation. Proving that reactionary spoilsports aren’t limited to the UK and US, Gökçek insisted that no team with queer athletes could possibly be a Turkish national team. Sucks to be straight, I guess: Karakurt and team took home the bronze, Turkey’s best finish ever in the event.
In more news sure to depress the bigots, after two cis boxers, Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu Ting of Taiwan, were attacked by TERFs and idiots calling them trans, international queerdom took up their cause on the internet, then rooted for them in the games. Both won gold, Khelif as a welterweight (up to 66kg fighting weight) and Lin as a featherweight (up to 57kg). Once the fighting was over in the ring, Khelif stood up for the people who stood up for her and called for an end to online bullying, especially, but not only, over gender.
Olympic boxer Imane Khelif said the wave of hateful scrutiny she has faced over misconceptions about her gender “harms human dignity,” and she called for an end to bullying athletes after being greatly affected by the international backlash against her. […]
“I send a message to all the people of the world to uphold the Olympic principles and the Olympic Charter, to refrain from bullying all athletes, because this has effects, massive effects,” Khelif said in Arabic. “It can destroy people, it can kill people’s thoughts, spirit and mind. It can divide people. And because of that, I ask them to refrain from bullying.”
But if you thought that winning some medals, landing some firsts, and giving the theocrats a 123kg black eye was all great, you haven’t seen nothing yet.
Sure, justice in silver and gold for badass bisexual Black woman Sha’Carri Richardson, excluded from Tokyo on the basis of smoking legal weed in Eugene, Oregon, was as sweet as sativa; it was fun to see Diana Taurasi go out on the queer top with her sixth Olympic gold in a row (team USA’s eighth consecutive women’s basketball gold); and seeing the shoulders on those women rugby players was a dream come true. But we want to speak about someone who didn’t represent any country at all: Cindy Ngamba.
Ngamba is a middleweight (75kg) boxer originally from Cameroon. At 11 years old some family members fled to the United Kingdom as refugees, and brought Ngamba along. The family maintains it had the proper approval for Cindy, but that when her uncle returned to Cameroon it was lost. The UK Home Office has been threatening to deport her since the age of 16, when she was accepted to university and realized she couldn’t produce her visa for her college paperwork.
Despite the threats, Ngamba fought and won many times in the UK’s amateur boxing competitions, having started as a hobbyist in the local Bolton Lads and Girls Club program. She also went on to get an undergraduate degree with honors, all while threats of deportation hung over her head. After winning a UK national championship, she met then-PM Theresa May celebrating her win and the efforts of the Lads & Girls Club where she trained. One might think that the UK might eventually forgive an 11-year-old girl for not keeping track of her paperwork herself, but the Home Office has remained resolute denying Ngamba regularized status.
What makes all this both horrifyingly inhumane and also relevant to this article is that Ngamba is an out lesbian. She has been consistently denied a path to citizenship or even legal residency, only escaping deportation because of her ability to document horror after horror inflicted on queer residents of Cameroon. International law prohibits sending a refugee back to their nation of citizenship or previous residence if they would face persecution and risk of great harm, a crime called “refoulement.”
“If I was sent back, I can be in danger,” Ngamba said. “So, I was given the refugee status to be safe and protected."
Unable to represent the UK and unable to compete in qualifying competitions in Cameroon, Ngamba got an opportunity that no other stateless athlete had ever shared before 2016: she was named to the IOC Refugee Olympic Team. So far that team has only been allowed to compete in the summer games, and only in Rio, Tokyo, and this year in Paris. (They will be allowed to compete in the Winter Games for the first time in 2026.) Given the incredible barriers most refugees face, it is perhaps not surprising that no Refugee Team member has ever won a medal. But while Ngamba has faced incredible legal problems and a ruthlessly anti-immigrant government her entire time in the UK, she at least had better training facilities in her local Lads & Girls than most refugees can dream.
And the dreams paid off. Team Refugee got its first medal ever when Ngamba took home middleweight bronze. "I just want to tell every refugee out there, whether they are an athlete or not, to never give up,” she said after being asked to carry the Olympic flag at the opening of the games. When she won, the whole refugee team took to the internet to celebrate:
“The Refugee Olympic Team is incredibly proud of Cindy Ngamba, the first EOR athlete and the first-ever refugee medallist at the Olympics,” the team posted on X, formerly Twitter. “Today, we are speechless. Cindy did it. Refugees did it!”
Yes, yes you did.
Congratulations you queers and refugees, you rejecteds and unwanteds. You slandered and bullied and outcast and goddamned precious hard-working sportsballers, we love every single damn one of you. Except Ngamba who makes us cry like a baby. We don’t even know what we feel for Ngamba, except that love probably undersells it.
[AP]
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fair_n_hite and bcb have each corrected me on my statement that Nikki Hiltz was the first out non-binary Olympic athlete. While they are the first to represent the USA, Canada's Quinn played with their national soccer team in Tokyo in 2021, winning gold. (Canada tied with Sweden during regular time, but won the penalty shootout.) So Quinn was the first non-binary athlete and medalist and gold medalist. Quite a nice trifecta for them.
During NBC's coverage of the closing ceremony they interviewed Tom Daley from Great Britain (he won bronze in 10m synchronized diving, which makes 5 medals in 5 Olympics for him). He just dropped right in the middle of the interview how much it means to his family and his husband, and it was just...normal. Which is how it should be, not often how it is.