Remember when the press couldn’t stop celebrating transgender athletes in women’s sports? It wasn’t that long ago. Every record broken by a male competing against women was framed as a historic victory for “inclusion.” Questioning it meant you were immoral, hateful, or worse. Newsrooms didn’t just report the story, they preached it.
No case captured that obsession better than Will “Lia” Thomas. Major outlets elevated Thomas to hero status after becoming the first male athlete to win a women’s Division I NCAA national championship. Headlines called it progress. Commentators hailed Thomas as brave and groundbreaking. At the same time, they ignored or downplayed reports from female teammates who said they were forced to share locker rooms where Thomas allegedly exposed male genitalia. None of that mattered. The narrative had already been written, and dissent was not allowed.
Now fast forward to the 2026 Winter Olympics, and something strange has happened. The same media that once couldn’t look away from “trans athletes” suddenly can’t seem to find one worth covering.
Meet Elis Lundholm, a 23-year-old Swedish mogul skier. Lundholm is the first and only openly transgender athlete competing at the Milan-Cortina Winter Games. That should be wall-to-wall coverage, at least if the media were being consistent. Instead, outside of a few soft-focus profiles, the story has been almost completely ignored.
The reason is obvious. Lundholm is a biological female who identifies as a man, yet is competing in the women’s category. And that reality blows a hole straight through the gender ideology the media has spent years defending.
The International Olympic Committee made it even more explicit. In a statement, the IOC said, “Elis Lundholm competes in the female category, which is aligned with the sex of this athlete.”
That sentence alone dismantles years of talking points.
Read it again. The IOC just acknowledged that women’s sports are based on biological sex, not self-declared identity. This is the same principle critics have been arguing all along, and now it’s coming from the most powerful governing body in global athletics.
That admission explains the media blackout. ESPN, CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post have all poured endless ink into stories demanding that males who identify as women be allowed to compete against females. According to Outkick, not one of those outlets has even bothered to publish a basic report on Lundholm. Not analysis. Not commentary. Not even a straight news article.
Why? Because this case exposes the contradiction they can’t explain away. When a male identifies as a woman and competes in women’s sports, the media frames it as courage and justice. When a female identifies as a man and stays in women’s sports, suddenly the story loses all its urgency.
We’re constantly told that excluding males from women’s sports leads to devastating consequences, even suicide. But when a female identifying as male competes against women, it’s treated as a non-event. Everyone understands why. If Lundholm had competed against men, she almost certainly would not be an Olympian today.
By all available accounts, Lundholm has not competed against men during her career. That choice makes perfect sense. Competing in the women’s category is the only realistic path to elite competition. And that reality explains why nearly every so-called “trailblazing” transgender champion is male competing in women’s sports, not the other way around.
The IOC has now said the quiet part out loud. Sex matters in sports. The media knows it. And they know that honest coverage of Lundholm would force them to admit what they’ve spent years denying.
