Culture

This Nonbinary Olympic Skater Was Repeatedly Misgendered on Air


 

Nonbinary skater Alana Smith is holding their head high after being repeatedly misgendered by Olympic commentators throughout news broadcasts of their event.

The 20-year-old pro skater initially qualified for the Olympics by competing in a number of World-Skate-sanctioned events, according to the sport’s regulatory board. And on Sunday, Smith competed in the women’s street skateboarding preliminary rounds at the Ariake Urban Sports Park in Tokyo, which determined who among the global competitors would advance to the medal rounds.

According to LGBTQ+ sports publication Outsports, NBC Sports commentators Todd Harris and Paul Zitzer and BBC commentators Marc Churchill and Ed Leigh failed to address Smith properly throughout the broadcast. Although there’s sparse video of the incident, one Twitter user posted a short clip in which broadcasters remark of a particular maneuver Smith struggled to land: “Nervous times for Alana Smith. [They’ve] tried it three times … Can [they] stick it in the last?”

“It really is pretty garbage hearing NBC commentators repeatedly misgendering Alana Smith when they literally have they/them on their board,” wrote @ErinInTheMorn.

At the time of publication, none of the commentators had issued a public apology for misgendering Smith, nor have either of the networks.

When BBC Sports reporter Tim Warwood was pressed by a fan demanding his coworkers apologize for the mistake, he said the announcers would have been relying on resources provided by the Olympics. Although Smith’s official Olympics bio uses the correct pronouns for them, it refers to their gender as “female” at the top.

“I hadn’t seen anything regarding gender and I’m 100% sure they hadn’t either,” Warwood wrote on Twitter. “Hence the mistake.”

Even though their official bios might have tried to erase their gender, Smith ensured their pronouns were highly visible. As previously noted, the skater wrote “they/them” on their board with grip tape and flashed it to the cameras every chance they got — with a huge grin on their face.

Although they didn’t directly refer to the controversy on social media, Smith reposted several Instagram Stories that called out the broadcasters on Instagram. That included a post by user @annikanolen, who wrote that NBC’s “sportscasters should absolutely know the pronouns of the athletes they are commenting on.”



READ NEWS SOURCE

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.