After repeatedly misgendering a transgender skier during a livestream at the Milano Cortina Olympics, NBC has issued an apology.
Commentators for NBC’s Olympic coverage on Peacock repeatedly referred to Elis Lundholm, who made history this week as the first trans man to compete in the Winter Games, as “she” during his first run in the women’s moguls qualifying round on February 10.
Lundholm’s performance on the slopes was overshadowed during a livestream of the qualifiers when one of the commentators repeatedly used incorrect pronouns while describing the Team Sweden athlete.
Despite Lundholm using he/him pronouns, one of the commentators repeatedly referred the Olympics as “she” during the livestream, although the announcer at the actual moguls event used the correct pronouns.
“Getting off course here though… oh she just skids out of that gate,” the unidentified member of the commentary team said. “She’s going to hop up and go around to make sure she does not DNF [Did Not Finish] as she continues down the line here.”
In a statement to Outsports, which was the first outlet to report on Lundholm being misgendered, an NBCUniversal representative apologized for the mistake.
“NBC Sports takes this matter seriously,” NBC said. “Today we streamed an international feed with non-NBCUniversal commentators who misgendered Olympian Elis Lundholm. We apologize to Elis and our viewers, and we have removed the replay of that feed.”
The trailblazing athlete is competing in the women’s category because the International Ski Federation regulations require that trans athletes participate in events corresponding to their “registered sex” and because Lundholm “has not started a masculinizing hormone replacement therapy regiment,” Outsports reports.
This isn’t the first time NBC has made a mistake like this. The network also had to issue an apology after the network repeatedly misgendered nonbinary skateboarder Alana Smith at the 2021 Olympics.
International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry has signaled that she plans to ban trans women from women’s competitions in the future, and is likely to re-adopt sex testing after the practice was phased out close to three decades ago.
Lundholm told the Swedish outlet Aftonbladet last month that he wasn’t going to let the backlash trans athletes face affect him. “Of course it’s something I thought about,” he said. “You can hear the voices out there. But then, I do my thing and don’t give a damn.”
