‘Trans Man’ In Women’s Moguls Forces Olympics To Say Quiet Part Out Loud

Elis Lundholm is a female Swedish mogul skier who claims to be transgender and "identify" as a man. However, Lundholm is competing in the women’s category at the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games. Obviously, there's no fairness issue at play here. Lundholm is a female and is competing against women. 

But the left-wing media have spent years insisting that "gender identity" is the only reality that matters in sports, and that anyone who questions that is a "bigot" or a "transphobe." Now the Winter Olympics has produced the perfect test for radical gender ideology, and the same outlets that love to lecture the public are mostly nowhere to be found.

That's because the story exposes the obvious contradictions and hypocrisy of the gender ideology movement, as it relates to sports. 

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) provided a quote to Reuters that should end the arguments about transgender participation in sports. 

"Elis Lundholm competes in the female category, which is aligned with the sex of this athlete," the IOC said. 

That is the IOC admitting that the women’s category is aligned with sex, not identity. That's exactly what we've been arguing at OutKick for years. 

Swedish skier Elis Lundholm, who claims to be transgender and "identifies" as a man, is competing in the women's category at the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games.

(David Ramos/Getty Images)

Newsweek tells the same story, even as it tries to frame it in the language of inclusion: "Elis Lundholm is a 23-year-old Swedish mogul skier and a transgender man. He is competing in women’s freestyle skiing at these Games."

Imagine writing that sentence with a straight face: "He is competing in women's freestyle skiing at these Games." Most rational people couldn't, which only amplifies the cognitive dissonance left-wing media members routinely exhibit.

A "transgender man" is a man, the public is told. So why is a self-identified man competing in women’s sports? This is the exact same dynamic we have already seen in college athletics. 

Last year, I wrote about a University of Washington rower who identifies as male while rowing on the women’s team. The key point was that women were not being cheated out of scholarships by some physically dominant male athlete. It was the absurdity of an ideology that demands people treat identity as overriding biology in language, while relying on sex-based categories in practice.

The Lundholm story is that contradiction on the Olympic stage. The entire gender dogma claims that identity is all-important, until biology becomes more convenient. Then we are suddenly back to the basic reality that women’s sports exists because men and women are not physiologically interchangeable.

This is why the silence from some of the loudest American legacy outlets matters.

ESPN, CNN, New York Times Oddly Quiet About ‘Trans’ Olympian 

ESPN, CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post have gushed over "transgender athletes" in the past, particularly when it's males demanding to compete in women's sports. That's when the media lectures the public about "inclusion," "affirmation," and the idea that participation should align with identity.

ESPN labeled Lia Thomas (formerly William Thomas) as a hero and celebrated the male swimmer during Women's History Month. Other outlets lauded Thomas as a "pioneer" and "trailblazer" for becoming the first male athlete to win a women's Division I NCAA national championship. 

Nikki Hiltz, who identifies as "nonbinary transgender," competed for the United States during the 2024 Summer Olympics. Hiltz, like Lundholm, is a biological female who competes in the women's category. Unlike Lundholm, though, Hiltz claims to sometimes feel like a woman and sometimes feel like a man and demands people use "they/them" pronouns when referring to the female athlete. 

"The best way I can explain my gender is as fluid. Sometimes I wake up feeling like a powerful queen and other days I wake up feeling as if I’m just a guy being a dude, and other times I identify outside of the gender binary entirely." 

American track and field athlete Nikki Hiltz claims to be "nonbinary" and transgender, but competes in the women's category because it's the only way she has a chance to win an Olympic medal. 

(Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

What's fascinating about Hiltz is that she clearly identifies as a woman when she competes in athletics against other women. Apparently, those days when she wakes up feeling like "a guy being a dude" never include race day. 

All the outlets mentioned above wrote about Hiltz. 

The Washington Post ran a long profile headlined, "For transgender and nonbinary runner in Paris, ‘this is bigger than just me’." CNN profiled Hiltz in a story about making running "more inclusive for all identities." The Athletic did the same thing during Olympic trials coverage, framing Hiltz as "transgender and nonbinary" and building the "bigger than just me" narrative around Pride Month.

In each of those stories, there is a reason the media has so little trouble. Hiltz was assigned female at birth and competes in women’s events. The Post says this directly: "Hiltz, 29, was assigned female at birth and therefore competes in the women’s category." 

The Athletic (the sports arm of the New York Times) makes the same point more broadly: "Runners like Hiltz who were assigned female at birth do not face the same restrictions for women’s divisions as transgender athletes who were assigned male at birth." ABC News (which has the same parent company, Disney, as ESPN) did a softball interview with Hiltz and extolled the virtue of the "LGBTQ advocate." 

But because Hiltz demands the use of they/them pronouns, outlets can tell the athlete's story without forcing readers to confront the most jarring sentence in this debate. Nobody has to write or say, "He won a women’s event."

That's not the case with Lundholm. 

‘Transgender’ Olympian Forces Media's Hand

It doesn't appear that any of the outlets who routinely praised Thomas and Hiltz (ESPN, CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post) have provided any coverage of Lundholm. Like, nothing. Not even a straightforward news story. 

There is an obvious pushback. Nikki Hiltz and Lia Thomas are Americans. Lundholm is Swedish. So, some might argue this is American outlets covering American athletes but not international ones. 

That excuse does not hold up, because these outlets usually treat the transgender athletes issue as a sweeping moral and political debate about inclusion, discrimination, fairness, and women’s sports. They have no problem using international examples when it serves the narrative.

CNN, in its lengthy profile about Nikki Hiltz, noted that it was "becoming increasingly difficult for transgender athletes, particularly transgender women, to compete in categories consistent with their gender identity." 

CNN pointed to the IOC’s 2021 framework and then highlighted that "others like the German FA allow transgender and non-binary players to choose a team." CNN was trying to make a point about global inclusion and even argue that other countries are more "progressive" than the United States (as if allowing males to compete in women's sports isn't the most regressive policy imaginable). 

So, shouldn't CNN jump to laud Sweden for being so inclusive? Shouldn't other outlets lecture Americans on how the rest of the world is so much more "inclusive" than the United States? 

Ah, but that would require confronting their own ridiculous narrative. 

Elis Lundholm identifies as a man, and the competition category is women’s moguls. The only honest way to describe it is the way Reuters and Newsweek describe it, and that description makes the contradiction impossible to ignore. The IOC itself has to explain, on the record, that the category is aligned with sex.

The restrictions, the controversy, and the debates are about male-bodied athletes seeking access to women’s categories. That is the actual issue the media keeps trying to soften with language. But when a Winter Olympics story arrives that requires the press to describe a self-identified man competing in the women’s category, the enthusiasm disappears.

Why?

Because the Lundholm case exposes the contradiction without requiring any editorializing. If competing in a sports category that aligns with a person's "gender identity" is important because it "affirms" their sense of self, why doesn't Lundholm choose to compete against men? Why hasn't any media member in Italy asked Lundholm why the skier is comfortable competing against women while demanding the world recognize her as a man? 

We're told, over and over again, that if we don't let males who "identify" as women and girls compete in female-only sports, it leads to awful outcomes, potentially as serious as suicide. We also see, over and over again, that females who "identify" as boys and men compete in women's sports. 

The reason for that is simple. As important as Lundholm's "gender identity" might be to the athlete, there's one thing that's more important: winning. Lundholm couldn't compete against men, certainly not at the Olympic level, so the Swedish skier chooses to compete against women. It's the same reason that Hiltz sometimes feels like "a guy being a dude"… just never on race day when it's time to run faster than women. 

In the end, this is not about one Swedish skier, who should be allowed to compete in the women's category, as long as she isn't taking testosterone or any other PEDs to affirm her "gender identity." 

It is about the media’s inability to speak honestly about what women’s sports is.

Women’s sports exists because women cannot fairly compete against men in elite athletic competition. That's the reason the category exists in the first place. 

The only difference is that this time, the IOC said it out loud. But, for the sake of preserving their narrative, the media is staying quiet. 

Their silence tells you everything you need to know.