Make It Count: My Fight to Become the First Transgender Olympic Runner

2025 LAMMY AWARD FINALIST

This "moving, deeply human" memoir tells the inspiring story of the first openly transgender woman to win a NCAA title, following the obstacles she overcame to achieve her Olympic dreams (The Cut).

CeCé Telfer is a warrior. She has contended with transphobia on and off the track since childhood. Now, she stands at the crossroads of a national and international conversation about equity in sports, forced to advocate for her personhood and rights at every turn. After spending years training for the 2024 Olympics, Telfer has been sidelined and silenced more times than she can count. But she's never been good at taking no for an answer.

Make It Count is Telfer's raw and inspiring story. From coming of age in Jamaica, where she grew up hearing a constant barrage of slurs, to living in the backseat of her car while searching for a coach, to Mexico, where she trained for the US Trials, this book follows the arc of Telfer's Olympic dream. This is the story of running on what feels like the edge of a knife, of what it means to compete when you're treated not just as an athlete, but as a walking controversy. But it's also the story of resilience and athleticism, of a runner who found a clarity in her sport that otherwise eluded her—a sense of simply being alive, a human moving through space—finally, herself.  

CeCé Telfer is a Jamaican-American athlete who, in June 2019, became the first openly transgender woman to win a NCAA title. Telfer became a NCAA National Champion in the 400- meter hurdles event which put her on the trajectory of becoming a U.S. Olympic hopeful for the Tokyo Olympics 2021. 

In June 2021, Telfer qualified for the 2021 U.S. Olympic Team Trials | Track & Field in the 100M & 400-meter hurdles. Telfer has appeared on multiple national media outlets, including The New York Times, CNN International, ESPN, Women’s Health, People Magazine, The Advocate, and more, capturing global attention for her incredible story.