Sports
Life after the ‘Chinese Sports Machine’
Champion swimmer Abi Liu finds rewarding new chapter as coach, wife
Abi Liu (Washington Blade photo by Kevin Majoros)
For years, Abi Liu was out, but not out. In her role as the head coach of 150 age group swimmers at Peak Swimming in San Jose, Calif., she was and still is, working with youth. In addition to the swim team, she is also running two swim schools, Saratoga Star Aquatics and Milpitas Star Aquatics with 4,500 students weekly.
The kids always seemed to pick up on things, but she was guarded around the parents. In 2013, Liu was falling in love and when her future wife came to see her at work, she couldn’t hold back anymore.
“That moment was really the turning point,” says Liu. “When KR arrived at the pool, I ran out and we hugged and kissed. The parents saw it and just smiled.”
Still, with her career focused on youth swimmers, Liu hadn’t had much interaction with out adult athletes. That all changed in April when she was asked to coach 40 LGBT masters swimmers at a training camp in Fort Lauderdale hosted by Team New York Aquatics. She wasn’t sure what she was walking into, but found a pleasant surprise when she arrived.
“It was like I returned to the mother ship,” Liu says. “I found a like-minded community that felt like my home team. I was even cracking dirty jokes.”
Liu was raised in Wenzhou, China and started swimming at age eight. In 1989 at age 13, she captured a title at the Chinese Junior National Championships and was recruited to the Chinese National Team. She would spend the next eight years of her life inside of what is commonly referred to as the Chinese Sports Machine.
“My parents wanted me to stay home and finish school, but this was my dream come true,” says Liu. “Twenty family members came to see me off on the bus and there were a lot of tears.”
As a national team member, Liu lived in a dorm with other athletes in Beijing, ate in the dorm and wore a uniform with the Chinese national emblem. Her dorm mates included divers, ping pong players and weightlifters.
“It was a very controlled environment where you work, live and socialize with other athletes. The mental burnout had to be kept in check,” Liu says. “I would choose the same path if I had it to do over again. It was a great life experience.”
During her career, Liu was a Chinese national record holder in the 200-meter backstroke, two-time Chinese national champion, gold medalist at the FINA World Cup, silver medalist at the Asia Games and bronze medalist at the FINA World Championships.
Home visits with her family in Wenzhou were limited to 15 days per year and in her dorm, 60 athletes per floor shared one phone to call home. Her new family unit became her teammates.
As for being a gay athlete, Liu says that it was not discussed.
“Nobody talked about sexuality, but having no parental supervision allowed me to be free to do whatever I wanted,” says Liu. “It was a dorm after all.”
When she finished her swimming career with the national team, she was contacted by a sports reporter about colleges in the United States that were giving out full swimming scholarships. She was granted a green card for people with special abilities and began swimming for the University of Nevada, Reno in 1997.
Liu left collegiate swimming after two years and found a coaching position in the Bay Area. She returned to school at San Jose State University and earned a degree in Kinesiology and Biomechanics.
In 2010, a group of investors approached her to start a new swim school in the area. Liu agreed to the offer and negotiated to have a swim team added as well.
“All those years of swim training was a physical experience. What I learned at school was a scientific experience,” Liu says. “It gave me the ability to explain why, and to educate my swimmers with techniques and information that stays with them.”
Liu’s relationship with KR evolved to a point where it was time to come out to her parents who reside in both Vancouver and Wenzhou. The news didn’t go over well and there was no communication with them for more than two years.
Abi Liu and KR Liu were married on Aug. 8, 2015, in Maui and returned to the Bay Area for a celebration. One of Liu’s brothers attended the party and was surprised to see all the people there supporting the newlyweds. The news spread back to her family and her dad reached out and asked them to come to Vancouver.
In Chinese societies, there is a custom of handing out red envelopes on special occasions. The red color of the envelope symbolizes good luck and is a symbol to ward off evil spirits.
“I wasn’t sure what to expect when we were heading to Vancouver,” says Liu. “When we arrived, my parents came out and started hugging us. My Grandma handed us a red envelope.”
These days, the Liu family is happily reattached and communicate on a regular basis. Abi Liu’s coaching career has soared and she is a two-time Pacific Swimming coach of the year.
She is also serving as an ambassador for USA Swimming’s LGBT Cultural Inclusion Group. The outreach program has evolved into diversity camps and Liu recently coached at a camp in Colorado Springs.
“I am so fortunate that my parents came around and that I have a loving wife,” Liu says. “I feel so much lighter and open now. Everything has lifted and I am 100% myself. I want others like me to know that they are never alone.”
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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