Queer Athletes Won A Record-Breaking Amount Of Medals In The Winter Olympics

The 2026 Milan Winter Olympics have finished, and LGBTQIA+ athletes have come back to their home countries bedecked in shiny shiny medals.

LGBTQIA+ athletes have won a total of 11 medals at the Winter Olympics, across multiple sports.

There were at least 49 publicly out gay, lesbian, bi, trans and queer athletes competing at the Winter Olympics, a record for the Winter Games. Among these athletes is Amber Glenn, a top American hope for a figure skating medal, and the first publicly out LGBTQ women’s figure skater in Olympic history. There is also the first publicly identified trans athlete in Winter Olympics history, Elis Lundholm of Sweden, a moguls skier. In Milan, there was also 23 out ice hockey players, all women, making it by far the sport with the most LGBTQ athletes.

In the end, 19 of the out athletes won a medal, with a medal count breakdown of 5 Gold, 2 Silver and 4 Bronze, which Outsports reports as the most ever for LGBTQ athletes on the whole.

In the Gold, Hilary Knight from won for the USA in ice hockey, as did Breezy Johnson in skiing, and Amber Glenn in figure skating. They’re joined by France’s Guillaume Cizeron who won in figure skating and Mathilde Gremaud of Switzerland beating Eileen Gu for gold in the women’s freeski slopestyle event. In the Silver category the queer-packed Canadian ice hockey team joined Bruce Mouat from Great Britain won in curling. And in Bronze, Sandra Naeslund from Sweden won freestyle skiing, Switzerland’s Laura Zimmerman placed in ice hockey, Belgium’s Tineke den Dulk won for speed skating, and Paul Poirier from Canada won for figure skating.

It’s not just Olympic gold that these queer athletes are returning home with – as US olympians Hilary Knight and Brittany Bowe getting engaged during the event. Knight is the captain of the US women’s hockey team, while Bowe is a speed skater.

The couple shared the happy news Wednesday on Instagram with a video of Knight getting down on one knee to pop the question. “Olympics brought us together. This one made us forever,” reads the caption.