Canada and the United States have collectively won every single gold medal in women’s ice hockey at the Winter Olympics.
Now the two countries will again play for gold, this time in the Beijing Winter Olympics. The game will take place Wednesday, Feb. 16, 11:10pmET.
Women’s ice hockey was first hosted at the 1998 Winter Games when Team USA beat Team Canada in the gold medal match. Since then the two countries have met in the gold-medal match every Winter Olympics except for 2006, when Sweden beat the United States in the semifinal; The U.S. won bronze.
This time around, the final between Canada and the United States has more publicly out LGBTQ athletes than ever before. Eight athletes in total are publicly out — meaning they have either talked publicly to the media about being LGBTQ, or they are clearly living life openly on social media.
Seven of those eight women play for Canada:
Brianne Jenner — Married her former teammate, Hayleigh Cudmore.
Erin Ambrose — Ambrose has a World Championship.
Emily Clark — A former player for the University of Wisconsin.
Mélodie Daoust — Daoust is going for her third Olympic medal.
Jamie Lee Rattray — This will be Rattray’s first Olympics.
Jill Saulnier — Saulnier also played for Cornell.
Micah Zandee-Hart — Zandee-Hart is playing in her first Olympic Games.
For the United States, Alex Carpenter is publicly out.
There are likely more LGBTQ athletes on these teams, but these are the athletes Outsports has identified as being publicly out.
There are tons of LGBTQ athletes who have played in these Canada-United States Olympic matchups. Caitlin Cahow has a silver and bronze playing for Team USA. Wives Gillian Apps and Meghan Duggan have a combined four gold medals for the two nations.
