US Shot-Putter Raven Saunders’s X Gesture at 2021 Olympics

US shot-putter Raven Saunders bought her first Olympic medal on Saturday when she received silver within the girls’s shot put with a distance of 19.79 meters. In the course of the victory ceremony on the rostrum, Saunders lifted her arms and crossed them in an “X” form. She instructed NBC’s Craig Melvin the meaning behind the gesture.

“For lots of the athletes, we talked about what was going to be our stance and what will we stand for. And ‘X’ just about represents the intersection of the place all people who find themselves oppressed meet,” Saunders stated. “I am a Black feminine, I am queer and I discuss psychological well being consciousness. I cope with despair, anxiousness and PTSD quite a bit. So me personally, I signify being actually at that intersection.”

After Saunders’s gesture, the Worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) is wanting into whether or not or not it violated its rules in opposition to protesting on the Video games and through victory ceremonies.

In July, the IOC relaxed its regulations round athlete demonstrations by saying that athletes might peacefully protest on the Video games, however solely on the sphere of play earlier than the competitors. Nevertheless, the IOC nonetheless restricts athletes from demonstrating throughout victory ceremonies and on the rostrum, and Saunders made her gesture on the rostrum after receiving her medal. The US Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC), alternatively, determined Saunders did not break the foundations.

“Per the USOPC’s delegation phrases, the USOPC performed its personal evaluation and decided that Raven Saunders’s peaceful expression in assist of racial and social justice that occurred on the conclusion of the ceremony was respectful of her rivals and didn’t violate our guidelines associated to demonstration,” the USOPC stated in a press release to Reuters.