Diggins, Pannek and Heise are three of the 24 athletes from Minnesota who will represent the U.S. at the Milan Cortina Games. But they are not the only Olympians who have spoken out.

Figure skater Alysa Liu, who is from California, has been sharing posts to her Instagram Stories this week about the deaths of Pretti and Good. She also shared a post on Thursday urging people to call their representatives in Congress to oppose the current funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that oversees immigration enforcement.

It’s unclear whether more Olympians will speak out on the world stage in the coming weeks, especially following news that the U.S. will send Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to Italy to assist with security.

In a video that’s been viewed more than 500,000 times on TikTok and another 60,000 on Instagram, Coach Jackie J, a popular content creator who focuses on sports, urged athletes to use their platform at the Olympics to “speak up” against a government “going after its own people,” describing it as not only an opportunity but a “responsibility.”

“Let everyone know that you’re not representing this government, you’re not representing what it’s doing, you’re representing the people,” she said.

The International Olympic Committee noted that all athletes have the ability to express their views but that there are restrictions in place to maintain the neutrality of the Games overall.

Athletes can’t make political statements during competition or official events, such as a medal ceremony or the opening or closing ceremonies. They are also not allowed to speak out inside the Olympic village. The IOC said these rules have been in place since the Tokyo Games and were made in consultation with the IOC Athletes’ Commission.

The Olympics have been a venue for political expression for more than a century, with the first modern podium protest taking place in 1906 by Irish track athlete Peter O’Connor. After winning the silver medal in the long jump, O’Connor scaled the flagpole to replace a British flag with an Irish nationalist banner in protest of having to compete as a British athlete before Ireland gained its independence.

The 1906 Intercalated Games were considered Olympic Games by the International Olympic Committee at the time, but the IOC no longer recognizes the event or its medals.

One of the most well-known protests to Americans happened at the 1968 Summer Olympics, when Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists and bowed their heads in a Black Power salute to protest racial discrimination. Smith and Carlos, U.S. track stars, had just won first and third place in the 200-meter race.

Amy Bass, a professor of sports studies at Manhattanville University in Purchase, New York, said that at first the big news was that Smith had broken a world record, but the protest made headlines only after the U.S. Olympic Committee removed their Olympic credentials following pressure from the International Olympic Committee.

“Doing that sort of created a bigger spectacle than had already happened,” Bass said. “And so they kept their medals and they were sent home.”

Their protest was part of a larger movement by a collective of Black athletes, the Olympic Project for Human Rights, who had threatened to boycott the Olympic Games if a set of civil rights demands were not met, according to Bass. But the group failed to find consensus, which led Smith and Carlos to the now famous moment in Mexico City.

Athletes don’t leave their lived experiences or belief systems behind the moment they step into a competition, Bass said, and the platforms they’ve worked hard to build are theirs to use as they see fit.

“The Olympics are inherently political, because one enters the Olympics under a flag which represents some form of nation state,” Bass said. “So there’s nothing apolitical about the Olympic Games, and there never has been. There’s nothing apolitical about sport, and there never has been.”

The 1968 protest led to Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter banning demonstrations at the podium and during specific events.

There are big and small ways athletes can signal their own views.

Bass noted that just before the 2018 Winter Olympics, skier Lindsey Vonn told CNN that she would not visit the White House if she won a gold medal, in a statement against President Donald Trump. At the Tokyo Games a few years later, the U.S. women’s national soccer team took a knee before they took the field, a protest against racial injustice.

It’s up to individual athletes to decide what role they want to play in a larger collective action, something that is a lot to consider, Bass added.

“The ancient Greeks created the Olympics for this reason — to put down swords and see what peace felt like, so that if we ever achieve it, we’ll know when it arrives,” Bass said. “But the world doesn’t stop being the world just because they’re skiers on the hill.”