From Outsports: A winter Olympian on being out

Olympian: Why gay jocks don’t come out
February 15th, 2010

I asked a friend of mine, who is gay and who competed in the 2006 Winter Olympics and who is a member of the National Guard, why he thought there were so few out athletes in Vancouver. His reply was so interesting and articulate, I asked him if I could post it here.

He is insightful about what keeps Olympians in the closet, “crushes” in the Olympic village, parallels to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and even some advice for Bode Miller about getting to bed early before his race:

By A Former Winter Olympian

I don’t think much has changed within Olympic sport since I competed in 2006, despite Matthew Mitcham winning gold in 2008. Sport and the military are the last vestiges of homophobic, conservative tradition in Western culture. Whereas the military could be made less homophobic by policy (if someone got around to doing that), sport is a disparate and complex network of organizations, sponsors, and athletes that span the globe, whose values can’t be changed by decree.

Much more importantly, Olympic sport has firmly reached its goal of becoming a business. The Winter iteration reached that milestone with the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. Results are paramount above all else.

While you may see humanitarian causes, like environmentalism and pacifism, and the Coubertin quote, “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part,” continually espoused by the IOC, much of this is driven by PR gurus who believe that these causes enhance the Olympic brand. For some reason, social causes like gay rights are not as readily taken up by the Olympic movement. It’s too thorny.

Being an athlete who is gay may not elicit outright harassment as likely occurred in the past, but it may be perceived by the athlete as a distraction from results. Athletes who are gay have nothing material to gain by coming out publicly. And as an athlete, you must think about things in terms of their utility, especially because sport is now both financially and athletically competitive. No longer is it just, “What else can I do to get that extra edge?” The mantra now becomes, “What else can I do to appease and win over sponsors?”

While it may seem from the outside that coming out would generate a lot of publicity, I feel that that kind of media attention would be falsely earned, that it wouldn’t be garnered for my athletic success, but for my sexuality. There is a strong dislike held by many elite athletes for the “human interest” stories that come around every Olympics. I think that this sentiment within my Olympic team made me focus completely on my training and results, so that I could earn that media coverage as an athlete, not as a gay man.

Read the entire article HERE.