World spotlight is on US track and field star Nikki Hiltz | 2024 Summer Olympics

PARIS — Nikki Hiltz was just a high school freshman — a spunky, freckle-faced, mischievous sprite whose legs hadn’t yet caught up with their spirit — when they heard the advice that would guide their entire running career. Not just their career, their life.

Dan Gruber, the longtime head coach of the Aptos High track and cross country programs, spotted the potential in Hiltz early on. After their first cross country season, Hiltz planned to play soccer, the athlete’s other love, before joining the girls track team in the spring. To that, Gruber responded: “Why don’t you not play soccer? You’re too good at running.”

That’s not the gem of advice that has guided Hiltz, now 29, though. Instead, it is an observation Gruber shared when the young runner was struggling, having become so focused on their watch and the splits it displayed that they could barely see the track in front of them.

“ ‘You don’t ask a gold medalist what their time is,’ ” Hiltz recalled the coach saying. “ ‘You just ask to see their medal.’

“It’s about competing and winning,” they said. “I carry that with me to this day.”

It’s also about being seen and being remembered.

Some 15 years later, Hiltz stepped onto the purple track in front of thousands of fans at Paris’ Stade de France on Tuesday for the opening heats of the women’s 1,500 meter run. It was their first race as an Olympian. And make no mistake, they’ve come for a medal — which seemed within the realm of possibility after Hiltz glided past world and Olympic record holder Faith Kipyegon of Kenya to place third in their heat and easily advance to Thursday’s semifinals.

But at these Games, where controversy has swirled around athlete gender and identity, especially in the case of women’s boxers, a medal would mean more. It would mean, as Hiltz crosses the finish line or steps onto the medal podium, the world would associate success and joy with an openly transgender/nonbinary person, or at least have a conversation about it.

“I don’t find worth in performances like I used to. I find it in all the things outside of it,” Hiltz said. “I think it’s a superpower to be aware, and I’m really happy that I’m finally able to tap into that.”

Acceptance won’t happen overnight, though. Even Hiltz needed time to embrace who they are and what they’re capable of.

College adjustments

At Aptos, Hiltz ran mostly unfettered.

They reached the CIF State Track & Field meet in Clovis that freshman year. As a sophomore, they went a step further, reaching the 1,600-meter final and placing third. The next year, as a junior, they won the girls 1,600 title in the third-fastest prep time of the year. Even after breaking a foot as a senior, they managed to get back to state — the biggest show in the sport — to take second in the 800 and third in the 1,600.

They made it look so easy, especially when Hiltz unleashed that closing kick that nearly set the track on fire.

When they got to the University of Oregon for college, though, their perspective was thrown out of whack. No longer the No. 1 due to lack of  age and experience, Hiltz was instructed to set a goal of top eight, which would secure them All-American recognition. That never felt quite right.

“It’s hard,” they said, “to be motivated by No. 8.”

On a trip home to visit their parents, Tom and Liz, and sister, Michaela, they sought out Gruber for some guidance. He gently reminded them of the advice he’d shared with them in high school: Just win.

“ ‘You’re just running,’ ” he admonished Hiltz. “‘You know, everybody’s doing time trials and you’re forgetting about the race. Just put yourself in position, and if you can’t kick, you can’t kick. But put yourself in a position where if there’s an opportunity to kick, you can do it.’ And since then, they’ve just been magical. …

“Well, there was that one tough year.”

Coming out

The 2021-22 season, aka the “one tough year,” was the year Hiltz turned their world inside out.

When the COVID-19 pandemic paused races in 2020, Hiltz used the time to take a spelunking expedition through the deepest caves of their psyche. There, the runner found no one but themself: a nonbinary person, one who didn’t recognize themself as the female they were designated at birth.

“I’ve never 100% aligned with feeling like a woman. I feel like I was somewhere in between, and maybe leaning even more toward the masculine end of the spectrum,” Hiltz said. “That identity I had, but I really didn’t have the language to articulate it. …

“It was just a really freeing moment of being finally able to put words to what I felt my whole life.“

Hiltz chose March 31, 2021, the International Transgender Day of Visibility, to reveal their self-discovery, posting the message on Instagram.

In hindsight, in terms of their running career, it might not have been the best timing to drop such a bomb during an Olympic year.

The Hiltz are hardy folk. When the cross country championships were held in Belmont, Tom would ride his bike the 60 miles up the coast to watch. Yet after their announcement, Nikki could barely keep their feet inside the vortex of attacks and accusations and overall confusion.

At every turn, Hiltz had to explain what it means to be nonbinary and that, yes, it is a real thing. People scolded them about grammar over their choice of they/them pronouns. The worst, though, were the unfounded claims that they had been born male at birth or that they had taken testosterone and should be banned from racing against women.

“It was just this really exhausting time in my life where I felt like I had to overexplain,” Hiltz said. “I just felt paranoia, like everyone hates me now and now, all of a sudden, I’m this burden. And now I don’t feel wanted in this sport that I felt like I belong to my whole life.”

Hiltz’s situation is not dissimilar to what Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting have gone through this Olympics, though the boxers did not foist the attention — and outrage — upon themselves. Instead, the International Boxing Federation, which has been banned from the Olympics since 2019 because of corruption within the sport’s governing body, claimed they are ineligible to compete in Paris due to their elevated testosterone levels and unproven claims that they have XY chromosomes.

Both Khelif and Yu-ting are a cis (non-trans) women who were born female and have always competed in women’s boxing divisions.

“It wasn’t something that was easy to go through at all,” Khelif told Sky News. “It is something that harms human dignity.”

Hiltz felt that, and the online barbs, in every fiber of their being. When the trials for the Tokyo Olympics were held three months later, Hiltz’s head wasn’t in it. They entered with the fourth-fastest qualifying time in the 1,500 and also qualified to run the 800. When it was over, they hadn’t even made a final.

The following year, Hiltz hit the reset button. They stopped worrying about every minute and went for the win.

True to themself

With Paris 2024 squarely in their sights, Hiltz moved to Flagstaff, Arizona, to train under Mark Smith. They changed sponsors, joining the Lululemon team. And they started coaching their partner, steeplechaser Emma Gee. Gee is a trailblazer in her own right, becoming the first openly gay person to compete at BYU, which is run by the conservative Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

They also have made a concerted effort to be unabashedly themselves.

All of it has gotten them closer to their goal. Hiltz not only won the 1,500 U.S. Championship in Oregon in June, they set a personal and meet record that holds up as the world’s eighth-fastest time this year. Hiltz is feeling comfortable on the track again. The person stepping up to the line is their authentic self.

“Now I feel so unstoppable,” Hiltz said. “I still get shitty comments, they just don’t affect me as much anymore.”

Hiltz believes that, just as shaving off a few seconds in a race brings a runner closer to a championship, shaving off a few assumptions can bring a person closer to understanding.

“Everyone in the sport has really gone out of their way to show me that I do belong and they’re going to make space for me. …And that has just meant the world to me,” Hiltz said. “And that has also allowed me to, I think, shine on the track because I now bring this confidence of: ‘No, these are my pronouns and and you can get them right. It’s not weird to use them. It’s weird if you don’t use them.”

Hiltz said they have noticed, despite the trolls, a positive shift in education about and acceptance of nonconforming identities since the Tokyo Olympic trials (and since the Games, when two athletes, one nonbinary and one trans, became the first of their identity to compete in an Olympics). NBC announcers seamlessly refer to Hiltz by their preferred pronouns. Organizers of the Paris Games, which has more openly LGBTQ+ athletes than ever, reflected that in some of the performers and themes of the Opening Ceremony. And when Hiltz arrived in the Olympic Village a few days ago, the entire USA Rugby women’s team sought them out for a selfie.

Whether Hiltz played a role in that growth by using their success to bring attention to the humanity of nonbinary people, or whether it’s just the natural course of history doesn’t matter.

Acceptance is the win.

And maybe someday people won’t care how Hiltz identifies themself. They’ll just want to see their Olympic medal.

Originally Published: August 6, 2024 at 11:44 a.m.