Released ahead of the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, the new Netflix documentary Glitter and Gold explores elite skaters competing for countries other than the one they were born in.
While athletes switching national teams is neither new nor unusual – and not limited to figure skating – the practice often raises questions about nationality, opportunity, ambition and fandom.
We spoke with McMaster associate professor of anthropology Karen McGarry, whose research examines sport, media and nationalism, how ideas of patriotism and athletic ambition intersect and sometimes collide, and what that means for fans.
Are we actually seeing an increase in athletes competing for countries other than the one they were born in, or is this phenomenon just more visible now?
As a baseline, it’s a requirement for Olympic athletes to hold nationality for the country they represent. With that said, a combination of factors has led to increasing visibility and, in some cases, an increase in the transnational migration of athletes. For example, some countries will pay athletes’ salaries, training costs and more if they compete for their countries.
This was particularly apparently after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which led to a migration of Russian coaches and athletes, particularly figure skaters, to Europe and North America in search of better training facilities.
While there is certainly an increase, it’s more common to see athletes train in multiple locations outside their home countries in search of the best coaches and training facilities.
What makes changing national representation an attractive option for some athletes?
There are a variety of factors that contribute to this. The big one is funding. Until the 1970s, the Olympics upheld strict principles of amateurism, with severe restrictions and penalties for athletes who accepted gifts or payment for participating in competitive sport. The binary between amateur and professional athletes gradually dissolved, and by the 1990s, NBA and NHL athletes, who were previously banned, were competing in the Olympics. This paved the pathway for many national governments or sporting associations to provide financial incentives to lure athletes to compete for their country. Sports celebrities, in this model, become commodified bodies that are bought and sold.
Then you look at the lack of availability of suitable partners within a particular country for pair or ice dancing skaters in figure skating. If an elite skater can’t find a similarly talented partner in their home country, they may look elsewhere.
And then in some sports, it can be advantageous competitively to compete for another country. For example, in the 1980s, the first figure Canadian skating team to leave Canada for France was Isabelle and Paul Duchesnay. They competed for Canada in ice dancing for many years but could never win the national championship due to the strength of Canada’s first-ranked team of Tracy Wilson and Rob McCall. As a result, they had difficulty obtaining spots in international events that restricted the number of athletes that countries could send. So, they obtained French citizenship, competed for France (who did not have a strong skating team at the time), and went on to become French national champions and silver medalists at the 1992 Olympics.
How was that received by Canadians?
They were attacked in the Canadian media when they switched. But that sort of wrath is less common now given that it is increasingly common for athletes to be mobile, and mobility is often associated with cultural capital in the world of athletics (having access to the best coaching and diverse training methods is viewed as a benefit).
Fans responded with greater emotion and despair when these situations first surfaced in the 1980s. In 1988 in the NHL, when Wayne Gretzky was traded from the Edmonton Oilers to the LA Kings, for instance, it was national news. He (and his wife, who was from LA) were labelled as national traitors.
The same phenomenon happened at the time in figure skating in the case of the Duchesnays. Even choreographers and coaches who were hired to work with non-Canadian skaters had their sense of national pride and integrity questioned.
This is, in part, because notions of territoriality, and the nostalgic idea of a ‘homegrown’ athlete whose talent was nurtured within a particular country, is mythologized in many constructions of national identity (think of kids playing hockey on Canadian frozen ponds). With that said, as Canada becomes increasingly diverse and multicultural, the expectation that athletes be ‘made-in-Canada’ is gradually shifting, and it is often understood as exclusionary. With that said, mainstream media discourses at the Olympics still often portray a nostalgia and affection for the ‘homegrown’ athlete.
How does this trend challenge traditional ideas of nationality in sport?
The concept of nationalism has always been fluid and it shifts in response to changing socio-political circumstances, among other factors. The global rise of populism and increasingly conservative and insular definitions of nationality may have an impact on fans’ responses to particular athletes in that we may see a resurfacing of very traditional and exclusionary nationalism that links bodies with territory and showcases nostalgia for “homegrown” athletes. This can lead to a hierarchy of “national” bodies and exclude some people on the basis of race, ethnicity, sexuality, or other factors.