Meet the 23 Gay Women Competing in the 2022 Winter Olympics

Feature image collage: Mitchell Leff/Getty Images // Tom Weller/VOIGT/DeFodi Images via Getty Images // Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images // Jean Catuffe/Getty Images

The 2022 Winter Olympics kicked off its razzlin’, dazzlin’, flipplin’, slidin’ 16-day event with a fireworks-heavy opening ceremony this morning in Beijing, and if you’re anything like us, you’re cheering for Team Gay, just like we did in this year’s Summmer Olympics! There are fewer participants overall in the Winter Olympics — because there’s only a third as many events in the Winter Games — which means there aren’t quite as many openly LGBTQ+ athletes to cheer for, but there’s still more than ever! When I first started writing about the Olympics back in the early aughts, the only gays were basically a handful Dutch speedskaters; now there’s seven openly gay players on Canada’s women’s hockey team alone!

Here’s a quick and handy guide on how to watch all the events (Peacock!), and below is a list of gay women Olympians and where to follow them throughout the Games. They are sorted alphabetically, by last name. Please let us know if we missed any confirmed openly queer women/NB athletes on this list!

Erin Ambrose (Canada)

Hockey

Megan Bankes (Canada)

Biathlon

Ebba Berglund (Sweden)

Hockey

Brittany Bowe (USA)

Speedskating

Belle Brockhoff (Australia)

Snowboarding

Alex Carpenter (USA)

Hockey

Emily Clark (Canada)

Hockey

Mélodie Daoust (Canada)

Hockey

Makayla Gerken Schofield (Great Britain)

Skiing

Amber Glenn (USA)

Figure Skating

Daniela Iraschko-Stolz (Austria)

Ski Jumping

Brianne Jenner (Canada)

Hockey

Anna Kjellbin (Sweden)

Hockey

Aneta Lédlová (Czech Republic)

Hockey

Kim Meylemans (Belgium)

Skeleton

Sandra Naeslund (Sweden)

Skiing

Sarka Pancochova (Czech Republic)

Snowboarding

Jamie Lee Rattray (Canada)

Hockey

Jill Saulnier (Canada)

Hockey

Ronja Savolainen (Finland)

Hockey

Nicole Silveira (Brazil)

Skeleton

Ireen Wüst (Netherlands)

Speedskating

Micah Zandee-Hart (Canada)

Hockey

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Heather Hogan

Heather Hogan is an Autostraddle senior editor who lives in New York City with her wife, Stacy, and their cackle of rescued pets. She's a member of the Television Critics Association, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critic. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Heather has written 1718 articles for us.

24 Comments

  1. The quest for an Olympic lady gay curler continues !!!!

    Also, I feel like snowboarding is unusually light on the gay this time around…what is happening?!

    • Agreed. I remember there being more queer snowboarders previous Olympics, especially 2014, the year I started paying attention to snowboarding and all the cute women snowboarders.

  2. Two more on Canada’s hockey team not listed here: girlfriends Marie-Philip Poulin (Canada’s captain) and Laura Stacey.

    Bless you, Canada

    • Literally just posted this right after you. So glad to know I’m not delusional and other people see this too!

      • Ah, but you brought the receipts! Thank you!!

        It’s shocking to me how few out players there are on the US team in comparison. It makes me think there’s pressure from the federation or something. I’m so happy that Canada’s team is so very out!

        (Hockey isn’t my thing at all, but if anyone is going to get this American-living-in-Canada into hockey, it will be this Canadian team *because* it’s so gay)

  3. This happened to me for Tokyo too, but I could SWEAR there are folks I know who are queer who are not on this list.

    Marie-Philip Poulin and Laura Stacey have been dating for YEARS. They may be private about their relationship but I’m almost certain they are openly queer at least? How can this not be public knowledge?! Look at these posts?! FAMILY TIME!

    https://www.instagram.com/p/CFZfuk0pmJP/?utm_medium=copy_link

    https://www.instagram.com/p/CHYaQenJJNk/?utm_medium=copy_link

    https://www.instagram.com/p/CEUPR4apdNm/?utm_medium=copy_link

  4. So what you’re saying is hockey is to the winter games as softball was to the summer games and both strive to be the WNBA of gayness. Gotcha.

  6. Damp squib warning —

    Love our queer athletes, but never forget that China has approximately 1 million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim citizens locked up in camps. The state is using forced labor, forced patriotic singing, re-education, birth suppression, and physical abuse to eradicate Uyghur identity.

  7. Hi Heather! While I love Amber Glenn as much as the next figure skating fan, she’s not competing at the Olympics. The three US women competing in singles are Karen Chen, Alysa Liu, and Mariah Bell. Incidentally, Alysa has she/they listed as her pronouns on Instagram, but I’m not sure she identifies as queer.

  12. Can anyone confirm if Hilary Knight is on this list? Feel like she is always low key dropping us hints without telling us.

Comments are closed.