The Other Olympians: A True Story of Gender, Fascism and the Making of Modern Sport

In December 1935, Zdenek Koubek, one of the most famous sprinters in European women’s sports, announced to the world he was living as a man. Around the same time, celebrated British field athlete Mark Weston, also assigned female at birth, announced that he, too, was a man. Both athletes became global celebrities, although they were all but forgotten a few decades later, but the transitions of Koubek and Weston were also a missed opportunity. Their experiences could have been the start of a push towards equality but – through a combination of bureaucracy, war, and sheer chance – the opposite happened…in other words the familiar raging arguments around trans, intersex, and gender nonconforming athletes! Author Michael Waters examines the stories of Koubek, Weston and other pioneering trans and intersex athletes from their era, and how members of the International Olympics Committee (IOC) ignored the atrocities of Nazi Germany, to pull off the infamous Berlin Games. It was a pact that would evolve to influence the IOC’s obsession with the cataloguing and surveillance of gender in sports.

Format: Kindle Edition, Hardcover & Paperback

Paperback: 368 Pages

Language: English