Sports
Washington Blade All Stars: Potomac Curling Club
Second annual Glitter Bombspiel coming Oct. 5-7
Laura Yee (left) and Jimmy Fallon say curling uses muscles not used in other sports and requires great concentration. (Photos courtesy the players)
The second annual Glitter Bombspiel will take place on Oct. 5-7 at the National Capital Curling Center in Laurel, Md. The event is a three-day curling tournament that will feature 24 teams from the United States and Canada.
Last year’s event was the first bonspiel (curling tournament) in the United States for LGBT curlers and their allies. The field was expanded this year and still sold out in two days.
This week in the Washington Blade All Star series, we meet two local LGBT curlers with the Potomac Curling Club who are competing once again this year in the tournament.
Laura Yee grew up in Westfield, N.J. playing a mix of sports including high school basketball and tennis. After seeing curling in the 2002 Olympics as a high schooler, she joined a junior group at the Plainfield Curling Club in New Jersey.
“I like that you have to be strong and have good balance,” Yee says. “It’s also super fun and a great way to meet people. Everyone tends to stick around and socialize after the game so there is a built-in community.”
When she arrived in D.C. for her undergraduate work at George Washington University, she continued in the sport at the Potomac Curling Club at the National Capital Curling Center.
Yee left the area to pursue her Master’s and Ph.D. at the University of Washington in Seattle. The Granite Curling Club became her new home for curling and her first pairing in Seattle opened her eyes to the longevity that many people in the sport enjoy.
“I was paired with a woman in her 80s and she was an example that people of all ages can play fairly well,” Yee says. “I can play this sport for the rest of my life.”
Yee graduated and returned to the D.C. area where she works as a statistician at the National Cancer Institute. She has competed in multiple tournaments around the country including two appearances at club nationals. She is excited for the second edition of Glitter Bonspiel which received a lot of positive feedback from last year.
“I think people believe that curling is easy, but a lot of muscles are used that you don’t usually use,” Yee says. “Tournaments are fun and intense because all your focus is on playing. It’s a great opportunity to get to know your team better.”
Growing up in Longmont, Colo., Jimmy Fallon enjoyed skiing, hiking, rock climbing and cycling. Competitively he was active in track and soccer. After graduating from the Colorado School of Mines, he came to D.C. to begin his Navy commission at the Washington Navy Yard.
After watching curling at the 2010 Olympics he signed up to play with the Potomac Curling Club. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” had not been repealed yet, so he kept his sexual identity to himself. After the repeal, he had a new freedom to be himself and found the club to be a friendly, welcoming environment. He is currently playing in two leagues per season.
“Curling is fun, engaging and physical. I like the strategic aspects,” Fallon says. “There is a community at the club with a tradition of hanging out after each match in the warm room.”
Fallon discovered a thriving network of curling teams for the LGBT community in Canada. They were running a series of gay bonspiels.
“It’s crazy how many bonspiels are in Canada. The gay ones have double the teams,” Fallon says. “It’s great to see the overlap between the LGBT community and the curling community.”
Fallon traveled to tournaments in Ottawa and Toronto and realized it would be fun to start an LGBT bonspiel at the National Capital Curling Center in Laurel.
In addition to curling, Fallon spent two seasons with the D.C. Strokes Rowing Club. Now working as a physics instructor at the United States Naval Academy, he also volunteers with the academy’s sailing program.
“Going to bonspiels is great and the treks out of town really test your commitment to the sport,” Fallon says. “These used to be separate communities and now they are joined together.”
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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