Nikki Hiltz knew who they were. It was time to share that with the world.
“I felt confident enough in being like, ‘Yeah, I have this identity, and I think it’s time to share,’” Hiltz said in a February conversation with NBC Sports track and field analyst Kara Goucher.
On March 31, 2021, International Transgender Day of Visibility, Hiltz made an announcement on Instagram coming out as transgender and nonbinary.
“Hi I’m Nikki and I’m transgender,” Hiltz wrote. “That means I don’t identify with the gender I was assigned at birth. The word I use currently to describe my gender is non-binary. The best way I can explain my gender is as fluid. Sometimes I wake up feeling like a powerful queen and other days I wake up feeling as if I’m just a guy being a dude, and other times I identify outside of the gender binary entirely.”
Within hours of coming out, Hiltz felt “happiness and relief.” But it didn’t take long for that happiness and relief to be met with disrespect and challenges to their identity.
“I was running into hurdles,” Hiltz said. “Things like people stumbling over my pronouns or purposely trying to invalidate my gender kept happening.”
Amid all this, Hiltz embarked on their first U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in the summer of 2021 in Eugene, Oregon.
“That was a really fast turnaround,” Hiltz said. “You just want to be focused on running the best race you possibly can, and not having those distractions.”
But Hiltz was fending off those distractions and felt it affected them at Trials. They failed to qualify for the final in the 800m and finished 13th in the 1500m final.
“I stood on the start line of the Olympic Trials 1500 final and said to myself, ‘maybe it’s just easier for everyone if I don’t make this Olympic Team,’” Hiltz later wrote on Instagram.
After slogging through Trials, regret seeped in.
“If you had asked me at the Trials in 2021 if I regretted coming out, I would have said yes,” Hiltz said.
That represented a low point for Hiltz. But they remained steadfast in their identity — and in their role empowering fellow members of the transgender and queer communities.
“Maybe someone is a trans person, or nonbinary, and wants to go by different pronouns, and that gave them the hope,” Hiltz said.
