Sports
World OutGames set for Miami in May
Organizers expand mission for Miami competition
Cyclists on the medal podium at the World OutGames in Antwerp, Belgium in 2013. (Photo courtesy OutGames)
The Rio Olympics may be winding down, but the 2017 World OutGames is just getting started.
The OutGames, which will take place next May in Miami, is a 10-day event that features 450 events in “sport, culture and human rights.” The 2017 OutGames will be a similar sporting competition to its previous years and open to all individuals regardless of sexual orientation to compete in a variety of disciplines. About 15,000 people are expected.
However, World OutGames Chief Operating Officer Keith Hart says there will be a few additions to the competition line-up. Dominos, a popular sport in South Florida, and netball, played primarily in Asia, Australia and the United Kingdom, have been added. Netball is also primarily a women’s sport making its inclusion in the World OutGames a chance for people to be exposed to a sporting event they may not have come across.
The opening ceremony takes place at Marlins Park, a Major League Baseball park that will be able to accommodate a large number of spectators. Plans to have the social events and entertainment include South Floridian culture are underway.
The games will also be a time of celebration as the International Gay and Lesbian Football Association marks its 25th anniversary and swimming celebrates its 30th anniversary during the event. According to Hart, a large number of swimmers are expected to compete in the coming year for the aquatic competitions in diving, synchronized swimming and water polo.
Swimming events are planned for the Ransom Everglades School in Coconut Grove, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Miami. Soccer is also anticipated to be exciting to watch with the finals taking place at the Florida International University Stadium.
The number of spectators is expected to be the highest ever. World OutGames has made an effort to connect with various organizations to increase numbers. Hart says joining a strong spectatorship along with competing registered athletes is a big part of establishing LGBT camaraderie.
“We don’t exclude people,” Hart says. “It’s open to the world. It’s an opportunity to showcase true diversity and that people can come together with a common bond. And that common bond could be a soccer field, a badminton court or it could be a dominos table. They come together and the interest is not about who you are or where you live, but the interest is, ‘Hey, let’s play awesome darts or dominos,’ or ‘Let’s get out there and have a rainbow of all kinds of folks swimming.’”
The World OutGames held its first event in 2006 in Montreal. Efforts to combine the World OutGames with the Gay Games have been underway for events in the coming years. Hart says right now the focus is to make Miami’s World OutGames a success and for the Gay Games to do the same for its competition in 2018 in Paris.
The south Florida location in Miami is also significant for the event, which will fall almost on the one-year anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. According to Hart, this is an ideal time for the World OutGames to make Florida its host.
“It will give us an opportunity to celebrate lives and to really bring people together for a common cause of equality and unity,” Hart says. “The World OutGames is going to showcase an opportunity for people from all walks of life to display that tragic things do happen, and it’s unfortunate that they happen, but there are also a lot of good things that happen when people of all types come together.”
Sports
US wins Olympic gold medal in women’s hockey
Team captain Hilary Knight proposed to girlfriend on Wednesday
The U.S. women’s hockey team on Thursday won a gold medal at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
Team USA defeated Canada 2-1 in overtime. The game took place a day after Team USA captain Hilary Knight proposed to her girlfriend, Brittany Bowe, an Olympic speed skater.
Cayla Barnes and Alex Carpenter — Knight’s teammates — are also LGBTQ. They are among the more than 40 openly LGBTQ athletes who are competing in the games.
The Olympics will end on Sunday.
Sports
Attitude! French ice dancers nail ‘Vogue’ routine
Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry strike a pose in memorable Olympics performance
Madonna’s presence is being felt at the Olympic Games in Italy.
Guillaume Cizeron and his rhythm ice dancing partner Laurence Fournier Beaudry of France performed a flawless skate to Madonna’s “Vogue” and “Rescue Me” on Monday.
The duo scored an impressive 90.18 for their effort, the best score of the night.
“We’ve been working hard the whole season to get over 90, so it was nice to see the score on the screen,” Fournier Beaudry told Olympics.com. “But first of all, just coming out off the ice, we were very happy about what we delivered and the pleasure we had out there. With the energy of the crowd, it was really amazing.”
Watch the routine on YouTube here.
Italy
Olympics Pride House ‘really important for the community’
Italy lags behind other European countries in terms of LGBTQ rights
The four Italian advocacy groups behind the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics’ Pride House hope to use the games to highlight the lack of LGBTQ rights in their country.
Arcigay, CIG Arcigay Milano, Milano Pride, and Pride Sport Milano organized the Pride House that is located in Milan’s MEET Digital Culture Center. The Washington Blade on Feb. 5 interviewed Pride House Project Manager Joseph Naklé.
Naklé in 2020 founded Peacox Basket Milano, Italy’s only LGBTQ basketball team. He also carried the Olympic torch through Milan shortly before he spoke with the Blade. (“Heated Rivalry” stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie last month participated in the torch relay in Feltre, a town in Italy’s Veneto region.)
Naklé said the promotion of LGBTQ rights in Italy is “actually our main objective.”
ILGA-Europe in its Rainbow Map 2025 notes same-sex couples lack full marriage rights in Italy, and the country’s hate crimes law does not include sexual orientation or gender identity. Italy does ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, but the country’s nondiscrimination laws do not include gender identity.
ILGA-Europe has made the following recommendations “in order to improve the legal and policy situation of LGBTI people in Italy.”
• Marriage equality for same-sex couples
• Depathologization of trans identities
• Automatic co-parent recognition available for all couples
“We are not really known to be the most openly LGBT-friendly country,” Naklé told the Blade. “That’s why it (Pride House) was really important for the community.”
“We want to use the Olympic games — because there is a big media attention — and we want to use this media attention to raise the voice,” he added.
Naklé noted Pride House will host “talks and roundtables every night” during the games that will focus on a variety of topics that include transgender and nonbinary people in sports and AI. Another will focus on what Naklé described to the Blade as “the importance of political movements now to fight for our rights, especially in places such as Italy or the U.S. where we are going backwards, and not forwards.”
Seven LGBTQ Olympians — Italian swimmer Alex Di Giorgio, Canadian ice dancers Paul Poirier and Kaitlyn Weaver, Canadian figure skater Eric Radford, Spanish figure skater Javier Raya, Scottish ice dancer Lewis Gibson, and Irish field hockey and cricket player Nikki Symmons — are scheduled to participate in Pride House’s Out and Proud event on Feb. 14.
Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood representatives are expected to speak at Pride House on Feb. 21.
The event will include a screening of Mariano Furlani’s documentary about Pride House and LGBTQ inclusion in sports. The MiX International LGBTQ+ Film and Queer Culture Festival will screen later this year in Milan. Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood is also planning to show the film during the 2028 Summer Olympics.
Naklé also noted Pride House has launched an initiative that allows LGBTQ sports teams to partner with teams whose members are either migrants from African and Islamic countries or people with disabilities.
“The objective is to show that sports is the bridge between these communities,” he said.
Bisexual US skier wins gold
Naklé spoke with the Blade a day before the games opened. The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics will close on Feb. 22.
More than 40 openly LGBTQ athletes are competing in the games.
Breezy Johnson, an American alpine skier who identifies as bisexual, on Sunday won a gold medal in the women’s downhill. Amber Glenn, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual, on the same day helped the U.S. win a gold medal in team figure skating.
Glenn said she received threats on social media after she told reporters during a pre-Olympics press conference that LGBTQ Americans are having a “hard time” with the Trump-Vance administration in the White House. The Associated Press notes Glenn wore a Pride pin on her jacket during Sunday’s medal ceremony.
“I was disappointed because I’ve never had so many people wish me harm before, just for being me and speaking about being decent — human rights and decency,” said Glenn, according to the AP. “So that was really disappointing, and I do think it kind of lowered that excitement for this.”
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