NBCUniversal has issued an apology after Olympic commentators repeatedly misgendered transgender skier Elis Lundholm during a livestream this week.
Lundholm, a trans man and the first trans skier to compete in the Winter Olympics, competed in the women’s moguls first qualifying round on February 10. International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) rules currently require trans athletes to participate in events corresponding to their “registered sex” with the governing body, as Newsweek noted.
During a live stream of the qualifiers on NBC’s platform Peacock, one of the two commentators — whose name was not stated during the broadcast — repeatedly referred to Lundholm as “she” during his first run, Outsports first reported on Tuesday. The other member of the team, identified as professional skier Sam Smoothy, used “they” rather than “he” in reference to Lundholm throughout the run. Lundholm uses he/him pronouns, rather than “they,” in English. (The announcer at the moguls event itself gendered Lundholm correctly, per Attitude.)
“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,” the unidentified member of the commentary team said of Lundholm, after the Swedish skier skidded out near a gate early in his run.
An NBCUniversal representative apologized for streaming the misgendering comments in a statement to Outsports on Tuesday.
“NBC Sports takes this matter seriously,” the representative 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 feed was still available to view directly through NBC’s website on Wednesday, but has been removed from the network’s Olympic replay lineup.)
NBC’s 2026 Olympic commentary team for women’s moguls includes former Olympians Trace Worthington and Hannah Kearney, neither of whom appear to have been involved in the commentary streamed on Peacock. The stream may have been produced by Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), which handles international broadcasting on behalf of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). During the 2021 Olympics, NBC issued a similar apology after commentators repeatedly misgendered nonbinary skater Alana Smith during an OBS-produced commentary stream. Them emailed NBC Sports for further clarification, but did not immediately receive a reply.
This year’s Winter Olympics take place in the midst of international conflict over rules for trans athletes in elite competition. IOC president Kirsty Coventry, who took charge of the organization last year, has signaled that she will move to ban trans women from women’s competitions across the board, and will likely re-adopt “sex testing” for future Olympic events nearly three decades after the practice was phased out.
Lundholm finished 25th in the qualifiers and did not advance to the moguls’ final round. “I’m happy to put down a run today. It wasn’t the best run,” he told reporters in Milan, per the Associated Press. “There are some things to fix, but I’m happy.” Regarding eligibility rules, Lundholm said only that he wants “everyone to be able to compete fairly against each other.”
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Originally Appeared on them.