Sports
Long road back
Autobiography tells of journey back from throes of addiction
Joe Putignano found redemption in writing and performing. (Photo by Thomas Synnamon)
There are movements, sounds and smells in sports that become an important part of the ritual of each particular sport and they often become a comforting factor for the athlete.
It could be the lacing of your cleats on the soccer field, the pop of the tennis ball coming off your racquet or the smell of chlorine when you walk into a pool.
For gymnast Joe Putignano, it was the feel of the mats hitting his feet during tumbling passes, the squeaking of his hands as he did giant swings on the high bar and the smell of chalk when he prepped for a routine.
Eventually his rituals changed and he found his comfort from the look of a tarnished spoon, the sound of rubber tubing and the smell of rubbing alcohol. Putignano was no longer a gymnast, he was a heroin addict.
The rituals of his once athletic lifestyle were replaced by a much darker way of living.
“You know those days when you don’t want to go to the gym, but you still go?” Putignano says. “There were days when I didn’t want to shoot up, but I did anyway.”
Putignano grew up in the Boston area and showed promise as a gymnast early on in his career. He was twice invited to the Olympic training facility in Colorado Springs and won several state and regional competitions while competing on the six apparatus in men’s gymnastics.
With the pressure mounting in his late teens from his sport and his sexual identity, Putignano fell into the rave culture of the 1990s and all the drugs that came with it.
“In gymnastics, everyone sees your imperfections,” Putignano says. “I didn’t want to be judged anymore.”
Over the course of the next 10 years he bounced between his heroin addiction, rehab attempts, employment, homelessness and more rehab attempts. He was twice declared clinically dead from overdoses.
While he was working at the New York Times he was going home at lunch, shooting up and coming back to work. They sent him to what he calls his final rehab where he met a counselor who urged him to get back to gymnastics.
“I kept trying to get clean because I didn’t want to give up on myself. I think that was ingrained in me because of sports,” Putignano says. “I started doing handstands and pushups and completely changed what I was doing. Within 90 days, the determination came back.”
Putignano Googled contortionists and found a group of acrobats in New York and discovered that he could use his talents to earn a living. He was still rediscovering his skills when he performed in Broadway Bares and ended up relapsing a few more times.
“Getting back into shape was harder than I expected,” he says. “I had to relearn everything.”
He eventually landed a spot dancing, riding unicycle and dancing on stilts in Twyla Tharp’s “The Times They Are a Changin” which ran on Broadway for two years. The show was cancelled and he relapsed during the last week but realized he didn’t like being high anymore.
He jumped right back into performing at the Metropolitan Opera House and met the creative director of Cirque Du Soleil’s “KA” and “Totem,” Robert Lepage, who asked him to embody the character of Crystal Man which Putignano portrayed for three years starting in 2009 on the “Totem” tour.
Crystal Man represented spiritual evolution and change and Putignano refers to those three years with Cirque as “my beautiful hell.”
“There I was, surrounded by the best athletes in the world and I didn’t even audition for the job,” he says. “I worked harder at my craft and got stronger because I felt I had to prove that I belonged in an athletic acrobatic career.”
During his time on Broadway in the Tharp show, Putignano began putting his journey down on paper and during the “Totem” tour with Cirque, he wrote the entire time.
“We did 10 shows a week and I could be found on the days off writing in a coffee shop, while the other athletes were off sightseeing,” he says.
The resulting book, “Acrobaddict,” offers a look at the similar qualities that are possessed by athletes and addicts. Putignano hopes his journey can offer hope to others with an addiction.
According to the 2012 D.C. Youth Risk Behavior Study, LGBT youth in D.C. are more likely than their heterosexual peers to report illegal drug use including meth (23.7 vs. 2.6 percent) and heroin (18.1 vs. 2.7 percent).
In the D.C. metro area, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring recently pointed to studies that indicate fatal heroin overdoses in the general population of Northern Virginia increased 164 percent from 2011 to 2013.
Putignano is currently in another type of recovery. He’s recovering from surgeries to repair a torn rotator cuff in both shoulders and looming on the horizon are surgeries to repair a torn stomach muscle and damage to his ankle.
Because of his addiction issues, the rehabbing process is being done without painkillers. Along with his physical therapy and weightlifting, he is using nerve blockers, Tylenol, acupuncture and Neurontin to keep the pain under control.
The story of Putignano’s surgeries without painkillers will be told in an upcoming video by Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN. At this time it’s unclear whether Putignano’s career as an acrobat and contortionist is over.
For now, he’s writing a nonfiction book about the devil, taking classes toward becoming a physician’s assistant and doing some modeling work.
At 37, he has been clean for seven years.
“Athletics make me happy and movement gives me joy,” Putignano says. “I can’t wait to ride a bike again.”
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.”
Puerto Rico
Bad Bunny shares Super Bowl stage with Ricky Martin, Lady Gaga
Puerto Rican activist celebrates half time show
Bad Bunny on Sunday shared the stage with Ricky Martin and Lady Gaga at the Super Bowl halftime show in Santa Clara, Calif.
Martin came out as gay in 2010. Gaga, who headlined the 2017 Super Bowl halftime show, is bisexual. Bad Bunny has championed LGBTQ rights in his native Puerto Rico and elsewhere.
“Not only was a sophisticated political statement, but it was a celebration of who we are as Puerto Ricans,” Pedro Julio Serrano, president of the LGBTQ+ Federation of Puerto Rico, told the Washington Blade on Monday. “That includes us as LGBTQ+ people by including a ground-breaking superstar and legend, Ricky Martin singing an anti-colonial anthem and showcasing Young Miko, an up-and-coming star at La Casita. And, of course, having queer icon Lady Gaga sing salsa was the cherry on the top.”
La Casita is a house that Bad Bunny included in his residency in San Juan, the Puerto Rican capital, last year. He recreated it during the halftime show.
“His performance brought us together as Puerto Ricans, as Latin Americans, as Americans (from the Americas) and as human beings,” said Serrano. “He embraced his own words by showcasing, through his performance, that the ‘only thing more powerful than hate is love.’”
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