Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) athletes have competed in the Olympic Games, either openly, or having come out some time afterward. Relatively few LGBT athletes have competed openly during the Olympics, and there has never been a gay man who has publicly come out before or during the Winter Olympics. Out of the 104 openly gay and lesbian participants in the Summer Olympics as of 2012, 53% have won a medal. Cyd Zeigler, Jr., founder of the LGBT athletics website Outsports, reasoned that this could be the result of the relieved focus and lack of "burden" an athlete would have after coming out, that "high-level athletes" are more likely to feel secure in coming out as their careers have been established, or their performance was mere coincidence and had no correlation with their sexual orientation at all.
Contents
- 2008 Summer Olympics
- 2010 Winter Olympics
- 2012 Summer Olympics
- 2014 Winter Olympics
- 2016 Summer Olympics
- Pride House
- LGBT oriented multi sport events
- List of LGBT Olympians
- References
Marc Naimark of the Federation of Gay Games called the lack of openly gay athletes a symptom, not the problem, of the Olympic Games. He said the International Olympic Committee should pressure countries to repeal anti-gay laws the same way it once excluded South Africa for its apartheid system of racial segregation, and "more recently, succeeded in getting all competing nations to include female athletes on their teams in London".
Alongside the Olympics, international multi-sport events have also been organized specifically for LGBT athletes, including the Gay Games and World OutGames
2008 Summer Olympics
In the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, only 12 athletes out of the 10,708 participants were openly gay, lesbian or bisexual, including:
Of them, only one of them, Matthew Mitcham (who also won a gold medal), was male. Mitcham gained media coverage in Australia as reporters thought he was the first Australian to compete in the Olympics as an openly gay person at the time. However, Mathew Helm, the Australian diver who won the silver medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics in the men's 10m platform, had publicly announced he was gay before the Olympics began. Other notable gay Australian Olympians include Ji Wallace, who competed at the 2000 Summer Olympics and won a silver medal in the inaugural trampoline event; however, he came out after the Games.
2010 Winter Olympics
Of the 2,566 athletes who participated in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, only six athletes, all women, were openly lesbian or bisexual:
2012 Summer Olympics
In the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, 23 athletes out of the 10,768 participants were openly gay, lesbian or bisexual:
LOCOG was the first organizing committee in Olympic history to include a commitment to diversity in its bid. The organizers publicly supported pro-LGBT concerns during the lead-up to the Games, such as during Pride London 2010, when special pins featuring the Games' emblem and a rainbow flag were sold as part of a wider range celebrating various aspects of diversity. LOCOG chief executive Paul Deighton stated that its vision was "as bold as it is simple – to use the power of the Games to inspire change. We want to reach out to all parts of the community and connect them with London 2012".
A slightly larger number of LGBT athletes competed in London, with 23 out of more than 10,000 competitors, and only three gay men. Outsports co-founder Jim Buzinski considered it to be an "absurdly low number", and considered that in comparison to the arts, politics or business worlds, "sports is still the final closet in society".
2014 Winter Olympics
In the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, seven openly gay women competed:
Russia's stance on LGBT rights were a major concern during the lead-up to these Games;in 2012, a Russian court blocked the establishment of a Pride House in Sochi for the games because it would "contradict" public morality, and in June 2013, Russia became the subject of international criticism after it passed a federal "gay propaganda law", which made it a criminal offence to distribute materials classified as "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships" among minors.
2016 Summer Olympics
In the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, a record 64 athletes out of the 10,444 participants were openly gay, lesbian or bisexual, nearly double the LGBT athletes who took part in the 2012 Summer Olympics. There were no openly transgender athletes, but Rolling Stone magazine reported that two transgender athletes would compete in Rio, based on anonymous details in IOC papers. 53 women and 11 men - who are now openly LGBT - competed in this Olympiade (some came out afterwards) :
One other LGBT athlete was known to compete at the time, but did not wish to be identified due to still being in the closet. The Games also featured the first same-sex married couple to compete, Helen and Kate Richardson-Walsh, British field hockey players. In the 2016 Summer Paralympics, six openly gay, lesbian or bisexual athletes are expected to compete.
Pride House
Pride Houses are a dedicated temporary location designed to play host to LGBT athletes, volunteers and visitors attending the Olympics, Paralympics or other international sporting event in the host city. The first attempt to organize a Pride house was for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. The first was organized for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. During the 2010 Winter Olympics, the Vancouver and Whistler Pride Houses served as venues for LGBT sportspeople, coaches, visitors and their friends, families and supporters, and became the first Pride Houses at an Olympics. Although both Pride Houses offered information and support services to LGBT athletes and attendees, the Whistler location in Pan Pacific Village Centre had a "celebratory theme", while the Vancouver venue emphasised education about Vancouver's LGBT community and, for non-Canadian athletes, information about immigration to and asylum in Canada, including "legal resources" from Egale Canada and the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (IGLA).
An attempt to obtain a Pride House at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia was struck down by the Ministry of Justice, which refused to approve the registration of the NGO set up to organize the Pride House. The ban was upheld by Krasnodar Krai Judge Svetlana Mordovina on the basis of the Pride House inciting "propaganda of non-traditional sexual orientation which can undermine the security of the Russian society and the state, provoke social-religious hatred, which is the feature of the extremist character of the activity".
As it became clear that no Pride House could take place in Sochi, a number of leading LGBT sports organisations got together to promote the idea of cities elsewhere hosting their own Pride Houses during the Sochi Olympics. Pride House Toronto, which is to be the largest Pride House ever and due to be held during the 2015 Pan American Games in Toronto, was already very advanced with its plans for a series of events during the Sochi Olympics highlighting the anti-LGBT laws and LGBT rights in general. In addition to Pride House Toronto, a group led by Pride Sports UK will host other Pride Houses of which Manchester will be the largest. Vancouver (Whistler), Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, Chicago, Cleveland, Toronto, Montreal, Philadelphia, Glasgow, Manchester, London, Copenhagen, Paris, Brussels, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Wellington, São Paulo, and Brasilia have also expressed interest.
LGBT-oriented multi-sport events
Alongside the Olympics proper, several major multi-sport athletics competitions have been organized with a specific focus on LGBT athletes, such as the Gay Games and World OutGames. The Gay Games were first held in 1982 as the Gay Olympics; as the brainchild of former Olympian Tom Waddell, its goals were to promote the spirit of inclusion and participation, as well as to promote the pursuit of personal growth. The 1994 edition in New York City (which marked the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots) surpassed the size of the 1992 Summer Olympics with 10,864 athletes, in comparison to Barcelona's 9,356. Similarly, in Europe, the European Gay and Lesbian Sport Federation organizes the EuroGames.
The World Outgames, as organized by the Gay and Lesbian International Sport Association, were first held in 2006 following a dispute between the Federation of Gay Games and the organizing committee of the 2006 Gay Games, which were initially awarded to Montreal (the 2006 Gay Games would instead be held in Chicago). With over 8,000 participants, the inaugural World OutGames were the largest international sporting event to be held in Montreal since the 1976 Summer Olympics.
List of LGBT Olympians
The following is a list of LGBT sportspeople who have competed at the Olympics. This includes athletes who competed while not being publicly known as LGBT at that time.