The Other Olympians

Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports

By: Michael Waters

Narrated by: Jennifer Pickens

"Michael Waters performs an Olympian act of storytelling, using the stories of these extraordinary athletes to explore in brilliant detail the struggle for understanding and equality."—Jonathan Eig, author of King: A Life

“This riveting audiobook brings all the facts and showcases why we need to acknowledge true history in today’s social climate.”—Book Riot

"Narrator Jennifer Pickens brings the stories in this superbly researched audiobook to life."—AudioFile

The story of the early trans athletes and Olympic bureaucrats who lit the flame for today’s culture wars.

In December 1935, Zdeněk Koubek, one of the most famous sprinters in European women’s sports, declared he was now living as a man. Around the same time, the celebrated British field athlete Mark Weston, also assigned female at birth, announced that he, too, was a man. Periodicals and radio programs across the world carried the news; both became global celebrities. A few decades later, they were all but forgotten. And in the wake of their transitions, what could have been a push toward equality became instead, through a confluence of bureaucracy, war, and sheer happenstance, the exact opposite: the now all-too-familiar panic around trans, intersex, and gender nonconforming athletes.

In The Other Olympians, Michael Waters uncovers, for the first time, the gripping true stories of Koubek, Weston, and other pioneering trans and intersex athletes from their era. With dogged research and cinematic flair, Waters also tracks how International Olympic Committee members ignored Nazi Germany’s atrocities in order to pull off the Berlin Games, a partnership that ultimately influenced the IOC’s nearly century-long obsession with surveilling and cataloging gender.

Immersive and revelatory, The Other Olympians is a groundbreaking, hidden-in-the-archives marvel, an inspiring call for equality, and an essential contribution toward understanding the contemporary culture wars over gender in sports.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

©2024 Michael Waters (P)2024 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"A riveting and important work of history. Michael Waters performs an Olympian act of storytelling, using the stories of these extraordinary athletes to explore in brilliant detail the struggle for understanding and equality. The Other Olympians is a book of great originality, deeply researched and beautifully written."—Jonathan Eig, author of King: A Life

“Michael Waters masterfully puts into focus the long-overlooked, yet remarkable stories of a cadre of Olympians who battled for their right to compete on the world’s biggest stage as their true selves. A crucial read for anyone interested in the intersection of sports, identity, and social justice.”—Neal Bascomb, author of The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It

"A remarkable and compelling chronicle of a forgotten episode in both the history of sport and the history of gender that demonstrates their centrality in the Nazis' rise to power."—Drew Gilpin Faust, author of Necessary Trouble

How women athletes have been treated by the world

Informative and very good book highly recommend Avery Brundage was a Nazi and needs to be scrutinized

Compelling narrative!

I don’t always reach for a history title, but this was a gorgeous and thoughtfully written narrative that has current relevance. Kudos to the narrator too. I’m glad I found this book!

A great history.

Michael offers compelling stories that help us understand the subjective aspects of intrusive examinations that are designed to assign athletes to a simplistic and unnatural binary world.

Wonderful Story from History

Really interesting stories about sex testing and the Olympics, great book. Gives good context for the modern day