Tags

,

If more Olympians during the Winter Games showed more flesh, I’d watch those Olympics too.

[This is part 8 of our ten day most memorable Olympic moments countdown to the 2012 Olympics. The daily non-Olympian athletic gratuitous eye candy is just a bonus.]

Matthew Mitcham did it shortly before his first Olympic appearance at the Beijing Games. Johnny Weir did it several months after his at the Vancouver Olympics. Most gay Olympians wait until after their international competition career is over. A small handful have done it during the break between Olympic Games, experiencing the event in two distinct guises. But only one Olympian has come out during the Games. Even if it wasn’t his choice to do so.

At the last Olympics in Vancouver, both Weir and Kiwi Olympian, Blake Skjellerup, competed as ‘not out but certainly not in Olympians’. Weir, slightly suspect for being an ice skater, heavily suspect for his flamboyant presence, chose to wait until after the Games to acknowledge his sexuality, using the publication of his tell-all book to tell what everyone already knew. During the Games – while wearing eyeliner, makeup, and pink ribbons with feathers on his skating costume – he responded to questions about his sexuality with, “There are some things I keep sacred. My middle name. Who I sleep with. And what kind of hand moisturizer I use.” The only question in reporter’s minds was which brand of lotion he used.

The only difference between an Olympic ice skater and a drag queen is the footwear.

Skjellerup, who from all reports was out to everyone except the international press, made it official in a DNA magazine interview three months after the Games in Vancouver ended. He waited he says because he wanted to have the focus entirely on his skating, and not have people focusing more on his sexuality.

Privacy and publicity are two reasons Olympians wait to come out. Another, fear, is probably more prevalent. Gold medal swimmer and this year’s Head of Mission for Canada, Mark Tewksbury, waited six years after his win in Barcelona to make the move. He says being fearful of the backlash was what kept him silent. “I was afraid of being beaten up, afraid my coach would stop coaching me, afraid my teammates would reject me,” he said. But he also notes his internal turmoil was what convinced him to finally open the closet door. “I got so tired of lying, of living a double life, I felt like I was going to die.”

UK figure skater and gold medalist John Curry didn’t have a say in the matter. At the 1976 Innsbruck Games, thanks to his superb body control and ballet-like routines which many say was responsible for bringing the artistic and presentation aspects of men’s figure skating to a new level, Curry became a household name worldwide. Going into the Olympics he was the reigning World Championship gold medalist and carried his nation’s flag in the opening ceremonies.

John Curry is the only Olympian to come out during the Games.

Both the crowd and the judges loved him. After completing his gold medal-winning routine, barely off the ice for more than a few minutes, he was handed an article from a German tabloid newspaper, Bild-Zeitung, that outed him. Dealing with the press in the 1970s was different than it is today and he couldn’t get away with playing the coy card as Weir did almost forty years later. Denying it would have been pointless. British team officials held a press conference the next day to broadcast Curry’s response. With the cat out of the bag, he acknowledged that he was gay.

As many gay men have discovered when coming out, the response was not as dreadful as imagined. Curry’s skating abilities drowned out the sensationalism of his coming out story. The only change was self-inflicted: he didn’t wear stage make-up at the Olympic ice gala at the end of the skating competition in case people said he looked effeminate. Being known as a gay Olympian did not end his career. He received a hero’s welcome on his return to England, and then went on to perform with and eventually own a popular commercial ice skating show.

This year the internet will be buzzing with rumors about Kristian Ipsen’s sexuality as soon as he steps onto the world’s stage. It’s that obvious. It may be a private matter, but when you are a public figure, people will talk. And the press isn’t shy about asking either. Coming out is a big step in any gay man’s life, doing so while in the spotlight can’t be easy. Matthew Mitcham avoided his sexuality becoming the focal point of his Olympic appearance by acknowledging being gay before the Games began. The result was that it was a non-event. NBC never even made mention of it during their extensive coverage of his diving. That would have been a good example for Kristian to follow.

Blake Skjellerup did not come out until after the Vancouver Games, but says if a reporter had specifically asked him about his sexuality he would have.

It’s been 35 years since an Olympian has come out during the Games. Don’t expect any big announcement to occur in London. Tewksbury says he doesn’t believe any athlete would use his Olympic appearance to acknowledge his homosexuality. Olympians’ focus, he says, is on the competition, not on their private life. “Most athletes, when you’re competing, your private life is parked,” he says. “It’s the same for straight athletes. They’re not out there thinking about who they’re going to date. They’re out there getting ready to win a gold medal. And they often put their quote-unquote ‘real lives’ on hold until sport is done.”

[‘The XXX Games’ are a series of posts about hot Olympians, gay competitors – both present and past – and general articles about the 2012 London Olympics of interest to gay men. So, yeah, lots of hot male eye candy. Click the XXX Games graphic below for additional news, stories, and pictures.]

The XXX Games of the Olympiad