You're reading: Openly gay athletes still scarce at Olympic Games

LONDON — It has been a great games for gay Olympians — probably.

British
equestrian Carl Hester won gold in team dressage in London. Midfielder
Megan Rapinoe has scored three goals for the U.S. women’s soccer team
and several other lesbian players are part of the Dutch field hockey
team heading into Friday’s final.

But it’s likely there have been more triumphs by gay and lesbian competitors that the world doesn’t know about.

There
are more than 10,000 athletes competing at the London games, but when
the gay website OutSports.com set out to count how many were openly gay,
it came up with 23.

“It’s an absurdly low number,” said site
co-founder Jim Buzinski. He said that compared to the arts, politics or
business worlds, “sports is still the final closet in society.”

Estimates
of the percentage of gay people in any given population vary widely. In
a 2010 survey by Britain’s Office for National Statistics, 1.5 percent
of respondents identified themselves as gay or bisexual, although many
consider that an underestimate.

Only a handful of Olympic
competitors have publicly identified themselves as gay, including
Hester, Rapinoe, U.S. basketball player Seimone Augustus, Australian
diver Matthew Mitcham and South African archer Karen Hultzer, who came
out to the media during the games.

“I am an archer, middle-aged
and a lesbian,” the 46-year-old athlete told OutSports — but said she
looked forward to the day when her sexuality was not an issues.

“I am also cranky before my first cup of coffee,” she said. “None of these aspects define who I am, they are simply part of me.”

Gay
sports groups say the London games organizers have been welcoming,
including gay, lesbian and transgender volunteers among its staff and
sanctioning an official games rainbow pin.

The London Pride House,
a gay hospitality venue, had official approval from games organizers.
London organizing chief executive Paul Deighton said the site helped
show Britain as an inclusive place “which welcomes the world’s diverse
communities and creates a safe sporting environment for LGBT athletes.”

But
activists fear the next host city — Sochi in southern Russia — will be
far less gay-friendly. Homosexuality was decriminalized in Russia in
1993, but anti-gay sentiment remains strong. Protests by gay rights
activists regularly end in mass arrests.

British rights activist
Peter Tatchell and a handful of supporters rallied Thursday outside
Russia’s Sochi Park pavilion in London to protest Russian authorities’
refusal to allow a pride house at the 2014 Winter Games — a decision
that was backed up by a Russian court.

“Quite clearly, this ban is
in violation of the Olympic charter, which prohibits discrimination and
guarantees equality,” Tatchell said. He said the International Olympic
Committee “doesn’t appear to want to engage with this issue.”

IOC
spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau said the IOC would not comment “on private
court cases,” but added that “the IOC is an open organization and
athletes of all orientations will be welcome at the games.”

Marc
Naimark of the Federation of Gay Games said the IOC should pressure
countries to repeal anti-gay laws the way it once excluded South Africa
for its racial apartheid policy and, more recently, succeeded in getting
all competing nations to include female athletes on their teams in
London.

“The lack of ‘out’ athletes in the Olympics is a symptom,” Naimark said. “It’s not the problem.”

There
is a particular dearth of openly gay male Olympians — there are only
three men on that London list of 23. The most high-profile is Mitcham,
whose Twitter biography calls him “that gay,
2008-Olympic-gold-medal-winning diver dude.” He’ll be defending his
10-meter springboard title at the games this weekend.

Rapinoe, who
came out earlier this year, said it was more difficult for male
athletes than for women to be open about their sexuality.

“I think
there’s a lot of gay women in sports, and it’s widely known in the
team, they can live a pretty open lifestyle without being open in the
media,” she said. “But I think for men unfortunately it’s not the same
climate in the locker room.”

There’s also the fear of losing
lucrative commercial endorsements. Sponsors would never admit that they
would drop an athlete who came out as gay, but few competitors would
want to risk it.

Much was made of the fact that former NBA player
John Amaechi signed an endorsement deal with razor company HeadBlade
after he came out in 2007. But HeadBlade is small potatoes compared to
Adidas or other huge sports sponsors.

Times may be changing,
however. Adidas spokeswoman Katja Schreiber said the company would stand
by an athlete who chose to come out of the closet.

Buzinski
thinks the environment for gay athletes is improving. He points to the
growing number of athletes, gay and straight, who are prepared to speak
out against homophobia.

Many athletes who come out say it has been
a positive experience — and even performance-enhancing. Rapinoe scored
two goals in the U.S. team’s semifinal win over Canada.

“I guess
it seems like a weight off my shoulders,” she said on the eve of
Thursday’s gold medal match against Japan. “I’ve been playing a lot
better than I’ve ever played before. I think I’m just enjoying myself
and I’m happy.”