make it count: my fight to become the first transgender olympic runner

By turns harrowing and hopeful, MAKE IT COUNT is the inspiring story of the first openly transgender woman to win a NCAA title, following her traditional upbringing in Jamaica, her fight to become a US citizen, and her efforts to achieve her Olympic dreams.

CeCé Telfer is a warrior. The first openly transgender woman to win an NCAA championship, 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 beginning her new life in Toronto and then New Hampshire, where she realized what running could offer her, 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 not just an athlete but treated like 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 being simply alive on this earth, 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. Following her victory in the 400-meter hurdles, Telfer appeared on ESPN’s Outside the Lines on June 13, 2019. Telfer has appeared on multiple national media outlets and campaigns capturing global attention in Olympic sports, the LGBTQ community, along with world-renowned professional athletes and Olympians.