A Finalist for the 2025 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Nonfiction. A Finalist for the 2024 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History and the 2025 Mark Lynton History Prize. Named one of the Best Books of 2024 by The New Yorker, NPR and BookPage. "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 , winner of the Pulitzer Prize 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 deftly written and engrossing book that shows how sport has always been a lightning rod for society’s worst instincts about how to treat trans people." ―Charles Arrowsmith, The Washington Post " The Other Olympians is a stirring excavation of important, forgotten trans history, and it’s also a warning about how easily the scales can tip against people who challenge outdated ideas about gender and sex." ―Ben Kesslen, The Nation "Waters traces this history thoughtfully, and meticulously, revealing how much about this recent and relevant past we have forgotten, or never knew." ― The New Yorker "Deeply researched, utterly readable, and revelatory." ―Stephanie Bai, The Atlantic "Michael Waters weaves dense history with narrative storytelling while never failing to center the humanity of the athletes and activists of the time. Within a fraught history, Waters uncovers stories of queer joy and resilience still relevant today." ―Adele Ackert, NPR "Cinematic . . . Today, the conversation about trans athletes has taken center stage, and Water's subjects feel more relevant than ever." ―Adam Rathe, Town & Country "[A] riveting history of trans and gender-nonconforming athletes . . . sweeping . . . While the culture wars light up headlines and trans athletes continue to face discrimination around the world, this immersive account of forgotten histories couldn’t be more timely." ―Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire "A fascinating and, oftentimes, frustrating exploration of how we got to where we are in both the sports and gender debate and the limitation of trans rights in general . . . Waters’s cinematic and wonderfully animated storytelling helps present a world of possibility open to us so long as we’re willing to keep challenging the mandates of the status quo." ―Stef Rubino, Autostraddle "Fascinating . . . an important dive in to the archives." ―Michelle Hart, Electric Literature "[A] revelatory debut investigation . . . Waters’s propulsive storytelling is bursting with insight, especially into the lives of trans men during the interwar period. It’s an eye-opening look at how fascist philosophy undergirds gender regulatory regimes in sports." ― Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A significant deep dive into the queer historical evolution and significance of transgender athletes in organized sports . . . Densely factual, impeccably researched, and written with dramatic flair, this book intensively probes gender bias in the Olympics amid the rise of European midcentury fascism and the epic challenges to gender essentialism." ― Kirkus "Sports buffs and historians will enjoy his deeply researched book." ― Booklist "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 origi