The following story from London's Out to Swim was written as content for the BT Storytellers programme celebrating the London 2012 Olympics.
Our Greatest Team
In the first week of August 2010, a team of 116 gays and lesbians arrived in Cologne, Germany for the 8th Gay Games.
The Gay Games is the world's largest sporting and cultural event organised specifically for LGBT athletes. Established in San Francisco in 1982, the Gay Games were the brainchild of Tom Waddell, whose goals were to promote the spirit of inclusion and participation, as well as the pursuit of personal growth in a sporting event.
Here we were, 28 years later, marching into a massive stadium like proper athletes, 80s pop legend Taylor Dayne on stage belting out the theme song for the games, a crowd of people from around the world buzzing with excitement and anticipation of the competition ahead of us, the challenges that we face and the sweet dream of gold medals to prove that all of that training and hard work was worthwhile.
We were the team from Out To Swim, the UK's largest masters aquatics club for the LGBT community - a team of swimmers, water polo players, and synchronised swimmers in Cologne to show the world what we could do.
As one of the largest teams at the games, our presence at all of the aquatics events was undeniable - not only were we a force to be reckoned with in the pool, but you could always rely on plenty of vocal support from your team-mates, shouting encouragements (and the occasional bawdy chant) from the sidelines.
What made this team great was not just the medals (although there were plenty of those), it was the sense that we came away from Cologne as a stronger and more united team than when we arrived. By working as a team we pushed ourselves harder, performed better and celebrated more than ever before.
The 9th Gay Games will be held in Cleveland in the US in 2014. Once again we are going in force. Once again we will be great.
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