This year the Olympics is all about equality.  No one will be held back from competing, no matter their race, religion, or beliefs.  There are several new Olympians this year who will be competing as the first of their kind.  We celebrate them and encourage more to continue to follow in these athletes footsteps.

Maame Biney, United States

Making her first ever appearance in the Olympics, Maame Biney is the first African-American woman to qualify for the American short track speed skating team.  She is also the youngest member of the team, turning 18 on January 28.

She qualified for the Olympics by winning the women’s 500m at the U.S Olympic Team Trials.  She started speed skating at the age of six because she was told she skated too fast to be a figure skater.

Speed skating is a form of ice skating that involves going a certain distance around an ice track.  The track is 440m long, and skaters travel at an average speed of 36.8 mph.

Erin Jackson, United States

She is the first African-American woman to qualify for the American long track speed skating team.  Jackson has only been competing in long track for around five months, this is an outstanding achievement.  

Jackson has competed on the Team USA inline skating and roller derby teams.  She plans to use the skills from these sports, and transfer them over to the long track event.  

Chloe Kim, United States

Chloe Kim became the youngest female snowboarder in Olympic history to win gold.  At just 17 years old, Kim was already known to be one of the best snowboarders in the world.  Her performance at the Olympics proved this to be true.

On her first run, she scored an incredible 93.75, easily overtaking all the athletes that went before her.  She would remain in first place for the rest of the event.  On her last run, a victory lap, she went all out trying to get a perfect score of 100.  Sadly, she did not get the perfect score, but she came unbelievably close with a 98.25.  She distanced herself from the rest of the group by 8 points.

Akwasi Frimpong, Ghana

Ghana has only competed in the Winter Games once before when alpine skier Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong was ranked 47 in the event.  Frimpong is now Ghana’s first Olympian to compete in skeleton.  

Frimpong was born and raised in his home country of Ghana, but at the age of eight, he moved to the Netherlands.  He competed as a sprinter for most of his life and dreamed to represent the Netherlands or Ghana in the Olympics.

He was selected as a second alternate as a brakeman on the Netherland bobsled team for the 2014 Sochi Games.  His goal is to help Ghana prepare more athletes to compete in the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.  He also hopes to bring home the first medal in the Olympic Winter Games for the country.

Simidele Adeagbo, Nigeria

This year will be Nigeria’s first ever Winter Olympics. Seeing as the country is relatively close to the equator, and it snowed for the first time in the country this year, you wouldn’t expect them to be competitors in the winter games.  

However, Adeagbo is one the competitors who won’t let the warm temperatures of her home country stand in her way.  She is the first Nigerian to compete in Olympic skeleton.  She also breaks a larger record becoming the first African female to participate in this Olympic event.  

For those who don’t know, skeleton is a winter sliding sport where the competitor rides a small sled, known as the skeleton bobsled, down a frozen track, lying face down.

The 36-year-old used to compete in track and field, but after not making it to the Olympics two years in a row, she retired and decided to take her shot at skeleton.

Gus Kenworthy and Adam Rippon, United States

These two men are the first openly gay athletes to qualify for the Winter Olympics.  Rippon is competing in figure skating, and Kenworthy is competing in freestyle skiing.

Rippon is 28 and has been skating since he was ten years old.  He is apart of Team USA’s figure skating team. The team event consists of the men’s free skate, women’s free skate, and the ice dance.  

Rippon had an amazing routine, hitting two triple axels perfectly.  However, the judges did not give him a score high enough to overcome the Russian and Canadian athletes already in first and second place, even though both of the athletes fell during their performances.

Rippon has had issues with Vice President Mike Pence, due to his supporting of gay conversion therapy.  But he put those issues aside to focus on winning for his team.

Kenworthy is 26 years old and started skiing shortly after he learned to walk.  He is competing in freestyle skiing for Team USA. This is the event that takes place in the halfpipe.

Kenworthy has already won an Olympic medal at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi.  He won silver in freestyle skiing, losing the gold to his teammate Joss Christensen.  The United States men swept the event that year.  Kenworthy will try again for gold this year.

Both athletes came out publicly in 2015.  Both men feel as if their coming out has helped them to become better athletes, and better people because they no longer feel like they are hiding something.