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Tokyo Olympic Games 2020

‘Rainbow Olympics’: Tokyo hailed as turning point for

LGBTQ+ athletes

Alexandra Topping
Fri 30 Jul 2021 15.19 BST
W
hen, still damp from the pool after winning his long-awaited gold medal, British diver Tom
Daley declared his pride at being a gay man and also an Olympic champion, there were
tears and full hearts across the nation.

And while there was little shock – Daley has been a vocal advocate of LGBTQ+ rights for
years – there was a joy and ease to his pronouncement that was new. With more publicly out athletes in
these Olympics than in all other Games combined, Tokyo 2020 is being hailed as the Rainbow Olympics, with
LGBTQ+ rights campaigners hoping its message of positive inclusivity can have a lasting, global impact.

There are at least 172 LGBTQ+ and out athletes competing in Tokyo, more than three
times as many as Rio 2016, according to Outsports.com, which celebrates the achievements of LGBTQ+
sportspeople.

Outsports counted 23 publicly out Olympians in London 2012 and 56 in Rio 2016. The US tops the table of
most out stars in 2021, with Team GB taking bronze with 16 out athletes.

The Outsports co-founder Cyd Zeigler says the site is being contacted by LGBTQ+ athletes in the Olympic
village asking to be added to the list, a dramatic shift from five years ago when the opposite was more likely
to happen.

“That really reflects the pride that these athletes take in being LGBTQ. It’s not something that they want to
hide any more, they want to be recognised as part of the community,” he says. “It’s clear that these really
are the Rainbow Games.”

At Rio 2016, the Team GB hockey captain, Kate Richardson-Walsh, and her wife and teammate, Helen, made
no secret of their relationship, having been together for years. But if the pair were competing now, they
would have been even more frank and open, she says.

Helen (left, and Kate Richardson-Walsh pose after each receiving honours at Buckingham Palace in 2017. Photograph: WPA/Getty Images

“When I heard – I’m going to get emotional here – when I heard Tom Daley talk in the press conference
about being a proud gay man, and an Olympic gold medalist, I just thought: yes, absolutely yes. What a
strong, powerful statement to make,” she says. “We certainly didn’t hide away or keep things to ourselves.
But I just wonder if perhaps now we would have been talking about it in a much more frank way.”

The couple received “some negative stuff”, she says, but emails from fans saying they had helped them be
open about their sexuality “made it all worth it”. Richardson-Walsh downplays the negatives, saying she and
Helen are perhaps seen as a “palatable lesbian couple”, but it emerges that they included abuse on social
media and scriptures condemning their life together sent via GB Hockey to their home.

On one occasion, a taxi driver, not recognising Richardson-Walsh, asked did she not think it was wrong that
the Team GB women’s hockey captain was in a relationship with one of her teammates. “I was thinking, this
is actually me he’s talking about and I’m in the back of his taxi and I don’t know if I feel safe enough to
confront this,” she says. “Now I feel like I would be in a much better position to, in a non-aggressive way,
challenge that.”

What Richardson-Walsh wants to see now is the transferral of acceptance from elite sportspeople to those
still suffering discrimination and facing hate crimes being committed against them in everyday life.

“People have to deal with much worse [than us],” she says. “There are still so many people in our community
who are ostracised, discriminated against and abused. It’s really important that we celebrate where we’ve
got to, but, at the same time, let’s not leave parts of our community behind.”

Daley’s joyful statement in this Games is by no means the only LGBTQ+ positive message or success coming
out of Tokyo. By Thursday Outsports reckoned that Team LGBTQ+ was ranked 12th overall in the medal
table.

Stefanie Dolson is on Outsports list of winners after winning a gold with the US in the 3x3 basketball; and
Team GB’s Carl Hester won a bronze in the dressage.
 Sue Bird and partner Megan Rapinoe. Photograph: Noah Graham/NBAE/Getty Images

Women outnumber men on the list of out gay athletes by about an 8-1 margin, with women’s football alone
accounting for more than 40 out players. Other gay male competitors include the New Zealand diver Anton
Down-Jenkins, the equestrians Edward Gal and Hans Peter Minderhoud from the Netherlands and the US
cox Julian Venonsky.

In the opening ceremony, the US basketball star Sue Bird, engaged to footballing legend Megan Rapinoe,
beamed as she bore the US flag. On Wednesday, after taking silver in the 1500m freestyle swimming, her
compatriot Erica Sullivan told the Washington Post: “I’m multicultural. I’m queer. I’m a lot of minorities.
That’s what America is.”

The footballer Quinn, who came out as non-binary trans in 2020, is playing for Canada in the Olympics,
while the non-binary American skateboarder Alana Smith said their goal going into the Olympics was to be
“a visual representation for humans like me”. Amid considerable controversy, the weightlifter Laurel
Hubbard, who is transgender, is due to compete for New Zealand at the Games next week, and was this
week praised by the International Olympics Committee.

Tokyo 2020 has also underlined the near-unique opportunity the Olympics provides for haphazard,
unscripted cultural exchange. Speaking after his victory, Daley spoke to a Chinese journalist about his son
and husband, sitting between athletes from Russia and China, both countries where same-sex marriage is
illegal.

Ziegler recalls a gay footballer telling him about speaking to the curious Iranian football team about his
sexuality, because in their country homosexuality was illegal and punishable by death. “That is the power of
these Games,” he says. “Athletes from all around the world are exposed to one another, and different
turning point.”