News giant frets too few Somalis are counted among Winter Olympic elites

A recent report by the Associated Press is drawing attention online for appearing to criticize a Nordic country for having too few non-white athletes on its rosters for the 2026 Winter Olympics.

The Associated Press (AP) published a piece Monday with the headline, “Europe’s rising diversity is not reflected at the Winter Olympics. Culture plays a big role.” While naming other European countries, the story and its accompanying video, posted Friday to X, focused primarily on Sweden. It prominently featured one Somali immigrant to the country who has a “passion” for snowboarding, yet does not appear to compete in the sport professionally.

“Immigration from Africa and the Middle East is changing the demographics of Europe’s top winter sports countries, but that hasn’t really translated to their largely white rosters heading to the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics,” a female narrator says in AP’s video. “For instance, Team Sweden is almost entirely made up of ethnically Swedish athletes, which is hardly a reflection of the country’s diversity as Sweden has welcomed historic numbers of asylum seekers in recent decades.”

The outlet’s story began with recounting the perspective of Maryan Hashi, a Somali-born woman who took up snowboarding after immigrating to Sweden.

The U.S. is not alone in grappling with diversity in winter sports. In Europe, immigration from Africa and the Middle East has rapidly changed the demographics of the top winter sports countries. That won’t be reflected in their rosters for the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. pic.twitter.com/VvUmRIt1Nz

— The Associated Press (@AP) January 29, 2026

“Maryan Hashi remembers the thoughts running through her mind when she began hitting the ski slopes in northern Sweden. As a Black [sic] woman from Somalia, she felt like an ‘alien,’” AP’s story continues. “A few years later, snowboarding is the 30-year-old student’s big passion and it is helping her integrate into her adopted country’s society better than she could ever have imagined. What she’d love now is to see other migrants experiencing the same joy.”

“My parents made me nervous because they felt scared. They felt maybe I was also out of place, maybe something dangerous, maybe something I don’t belong to, but I proved them wrong,” Hashi says in the video, appearing to reference the time she started to snowboard in Sweden.

“Immigration from Africa and the Middle East has transformed the demographics of Europe in recent decades. And while the growing diversity is reflected in many sports such as soccer … it hasn’t made a dent in winter sports,” AP’s story continues.

It also noted that, during the upcoming Winter Olympics taking place in Northern Italy from Feb. 6 – 22, “Sweden is sending a team made up almost exclusively of ethnically Swedish athletes.” It called New York Rangers star Mika Zibanejad, a member of the 2026 Swedish Olympic men’s ice hockey team, a “rare exception.” Zibanejad was born in Sweden to an ethnically Iranian father and an ethnically Finnish mother.

“The Olympic rosters of France, Germany, Switzerland and other European winter sports nations look a lot like Sweden’s: overwhelmingly white and lacking the immigrant representation seen in their soccer or basketball teams,” AP added.

“Immigrants typically live in major urban areas away from skiing hubs in the mountains and are in less privileged economic positions,” the narrator of AP’s video continues. “Participating in winter sports can be very expensive. While some countries like Sweden offer programs to young children that give them access to free ski equipment and the slopes, experts also believe that more needs to be done by winter sports to improve accessibility, specifically for immigrants and underserved communities.”

The AP is concerned that there are too few Somalis snowboarding for the Swedish Olympic team. Every time you think the media has evolved to be more sophisticated and serious since the 2012-2020 era, you get an item like this. https://t.co/CNGKrcfik6

— Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers (@UnderSecPD) January 31, 2026

A Trump administration State Department official called out the outlet in an X reply to the video.

“The AP is concerned that there are too few Somalis snowboarding for the Swedish Olympic team,” Sarah Rogers, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, wrote Saturday on the platform. “Every time you think the media has evolved to be more sophisticated and serious since the 2012-2020 era, you get an item like this.”

“Wait til you guys find out about the racial demographics in the NBA or on NFL defenses,” conservative activist Robby Starbuck, known for his opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in corporate America, wrote in an X reply to AP.

NBA and NFL players — specifically on the defensive side of the ball — are predominantly African American, despite the fact that only about 14% of the U.S. population is black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

About 73% of Sweden’s population claims an ethnically Swedish background, Statistics Sweden, an agency of the European country’s Ministry of Finance, reports, citing 2022 data. Less than one percent of Sweden’s population is of Somali descent.

As of Sunday afternoon, both Rogers’s and Starbuck’s replies to AP on X have received significantly more “likes” than the video.

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