Sports
Formation hurdles
Dearth of opportunities in region remain in some sports
Ben Takai competing at the IGLA World Championships in Honolulu in 2011. (Photo by Cliff Betita)
About 40 local LGBT sports teams and clubs gathered for the annual Team D.C. SportsFest. The event, held April 9, is an opportunity for the teams to recruit new athletes and a chance for members to mingle.
Washington is home to one of the largest LGBT sports communities in the world, but there are still a few major sports missing from the local offerings.
Last summer at the 2014 Cleveland/Akron Gay Games, Team D.C. sent athletes in close to 25 sports and medaled in 18 of those sports. Wrestling, ice hockey and diving are just a few of the sports that had no local representation. There was one local athlete in the wrestling offshoot sport of grappling.
While ice hockey and wrestling are definitely more popular in the Midwestern and northern United States, diving is contested all across the country. The LGBT masters divers who compete nationally are spread out in various cities and train with straight teams.
New York City and Paris are home to the largest LGBT diving communities in the world. Croft Vaughn is the head diving coach for Team New York Aquatics and he was recruited in 2010 to launch its LGBT diving program.
Vaughn says it’s hard to have an LGBT masters diving team outside of a large metropolitan area, but not impossible.
“Most of the masters’ divers are former competitors who want to stay active in the community and train to keep their form and technique,” Vaughn says. “The inexperienced divers who come in are looking to discover something new.”
Competitions available for the LGBT diving community include the annual International Gay & Lesbian Aquatics Championships, the Gay Games, the World OutGames and the EuroGames. Most of the LGBT divers also compete in straight competitions.
In the platform portion of the sport, USA Diving has set rules as precautionary measures for the masters’ divers who hit speeds of 30 mph when they dive off the 10-meter platform.
“Dives with higher degrees of difficulty are only permitted off the 5 meter and 7 meter platforms,” says Vaughn. “For that reason, you don’t see many dives off the 10-meter platform in masters diving.”
The obstacles for someone who wants to start a diving team includes access to facilities, coaching and the dreaded Speedo, he says.
“It isn’t a sport that you can practice on your own, so you need good coaching,” says Vaughn. “Another hindrance is convincing people who have been heavily socialized to wear a speedo and put their bodies in awkward positions.”
Locally, there are masters diving teams at the Montgomery Dive Club and the Alexandria Dive Club. Both clubs offer access to good facilities and coaching.
Ben Takai grew up in Montgomery County and began his sports career in gymnastics at age 7. When a visiting Soviet coach pointed out that he was going to be too tall for the sport, he switched to diving and swimming.
The coach’s words turned out to be prophetic as Takai grew to 6 feet, 3 inches and went on to become an all-American diver and swimmer at Watkins Mill High School.
“Springboard divers are generally known for their strength and power,” Takai says. “Judges are looking for long lines in platform diving, so that event suited me because of my height and thin stature.”
Takai, 33, also competed as an out diver at Bates College in Lewiston, Me., and post-college joined the Montgomery Dive Club to train for one last competition.
As part of the contingent from the District of Columbia Aquatics Club, Takai traveled to Honolulu for the 2011 International Gay and Lesbian World Championships where he won three gold medals in diving and three gold medals in swimming.
He is no longer diving and points to several reasons including the wear and tear on one’s body from the sport.
“I have accomplished many fantastic things in diving and don’t feel the need to compete again,” says Takai. “However, there are many possibilities in this world.”
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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