American broadcaster NBC Sports has removed their Winter Olympics footage and issued an apology after incorrectly gendering athlete Elis Lundholm during the women’s moguls event. NBC, as the exclusive United States broadcaster of the Milan-Cortina Games, has faced significant backlash throughout.

They have now formally apologised for misidentifying Lundholm, following a broadcaster’s comments caught on a live microphone. Lundholm, who was assigned female at birth but identifies as male, competed in the moguls at the Games in Italy. Despite a mistake on the slopes, Lundholm finished 25th overall after attempting to qualify.

The 23-year-old is allowed to compete in the women’s freestyle division under current International Olympic Committee (IOC) guidelines and is the only openly transgender athlete at the Olympics. However, NBC mistakenly used the incorrect pronoun during its coverage.

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The athlete was referred to as ‘she’ multiple times. The commentator said: “Getting off course here though… oh she just skids out of that gate. She’s going to hop up and go around to make sure she does not DNF as she continues down the line here.”

NBC subsequently removed the footage from all platforms and social media channels and issued an apology.

“NBC Sports takes this matter seriously,” NBC said. “Today we streamed an international feed with non-NBCUniversal commentators who misgendered Olympian Elis Lundholm. We apologise to Elis and our viewers, and we have removed the replay of that feed.”

Lundholm’s participation marked a groundbreaking moment, as while 20 transgender athletes are listed as having competed at the Summer Olympics, none have competed at the Winter Games. The Swedish ski team has also taken steps to ensure that Lundholm doesn’t face backlash.

They confirmed that Lundholm has not undergone any treatment or surgery, ruling out any allegations of an unfair advantage. Despite the historic moment at the Winter Olympics, Lundholm remained focused on skiing and didn’t reflect deeply on the situation.”

I haven’t really thought about it that much,” he said. “I’m here at the same conditions as everyone else, so yeah, I’m just skiing.”

Lundholm’s competitors also expressed support. US skier Tess Johnson said: “I think it’s great that Elis is competing as the, I think, first transgender Winter Olympian. I think that’s awesome, and, yeah, I mean we’re here to ski, we’re here to have fun, and that’s exactly what we do.”