Sports
Decision on 2022 Gay Games set for October
Can D.C. edge out Hong Kong and Guadalajara to host event?
Mayor Muriel Bowser spoke at a bid rally for the Gay Games in June. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
The competition between D.C., Hong Kong, and Guadalajara, Mexico to be selected as the host city for the 2022 Gay Games is entering the final stretch, with observers familiar with the quadrennial international LGBT sports event saying each of the cities submitted good bids.
Les Johnson, vice president for external affairs for the Federation of Gay Games, which will select the host city, said the federation’s Site Selection Committee was in the process of completing a 100-page or longer report on each of the three cities that FGG officials will review in September.
The Site Selection Committee visited the three cities in June when D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and dozens of supporters of the D.C. bid, including officials of the city’s convention and visitors bureaus, pledged their support for the D.C. bid.
Johnson noted that representatives of the three cities will be given an opportunity to make a final in-person presentation on why their city should be selected to FGG leaders on Oct. 28 in Paris, where the FGG’s annual meeting will take place.
Two days later, on Oct. 30, the FGG is scheduled to announce the winning city during a gala reception that, among other things, will promote the 2018 Gay Games set to take place in Paris.
“We are confident that if chosen, Washington, D.C. will host a fantastic event that will bring in 12,000 to 15,000 athletes here to compete under the banner of ‘Participation, Inclusion, and Personal Best,’ the motto of the Federation of Gay Games,” said Brent Minor, who serves as chair of Gay Games D.C. 2022, the official name for the District’s bid committee.
D.C., Hong Kong, and Guadalajara each has a long record of hosting large events like conventions and sporting competitions. The bids submitted by the three cities, which are hundreds of pages long, each assert that they have the infrastructure and community support to host dozens of individual sporting events ranging from soccer and swimming to tennis and rowing.
Observers say that if the FGG decision makers view the three cities as being equally qualified from a technical and infrastructure standpoint they might look toward other factors that could favor Hong Kong and Guadalajara. If selected, for example, Hong Kong would mark the first time the Gay Games would be held in Asia. Similarly, Guadalajara would be the first city in Latin America to host the Games.
Minor acknowledges holding the Gay Games in Asia and Latin America would be an historic first. But he said D.C.’s bid calls for significantly increasing the diversity of participants in the Gay Games that would match if not exceed the diversity of holding the Games in Asia or Latin America.
“Ours is more than just geography,” he said. “We are putting forth an initiative to attract more women, more African Americans, deaf and hard of hearing, millennials, and transgender people. We have outlined specific initiatives to engage these populations that have been underrepresented in the Games,” said Minor.
“So that is something where we are very strong because we’re really talking about engaging underrepresented populations, whether that’s bringing more people from Asia or bringing more people from Latin America or bringing more African Americans or more women,” he said.
“I think we have a more thorough outreach plan to reach these populations that have long been priorities for the Federation of Gay Games,” he said.
Johnson, meanwhile, said he is certain that the FGG and each of the three cities in contention to host the 2022 Gay Games has safeguards in place to prevent a financial collapse that prevented another quadrennial LGBT sporting competition – the Out Games – from taking place as scheduled earlier this year in Miami.
To the shock and dismay of hundreds of athletes and spectators who descended on Miami to attend or participate in the Out Games, officials with that event announced virtually all of the sporting venues had to be cancelled. Officials in Miami, which financed part of the scheduled events, announced they were conducting an investigation to determine how such a financial meltdown could have happened.
“The thing about D.C. is there will be insurance and safeguards in place and we’ll know way ahead of time” about any potential problems, Johnson said. “Everything will be tracked. I just don’t see that as a foreseeable thing,” he said.
The D.C. government has pledged to contribute $2 million to help finance the Games if D.C. is selected as the host city.
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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