Representation Matters
From the Desk of the SVTV Network Sports Team:
Team LGBTQ+ will be hard-pressed to beat their record medal haul from last year’s Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, where 55 LGBTQ+ competitors took home medals (and even swept the women’s soccer event)!
Team LGBTQ+ has already picked 10 Olympians to represent their nations in Beijing later this year, and preparations are well underway. Gus Kenworthy, an out skier, was the most recent addition to the roster and will compete for Team Great Britain in the freestyle halfpipe category. Here are all 10 of our Winter Olympians who have been chosen to compete thus far!
Bruce Mouat – Team Great Britain
Bruce Mouat, 27, is coming off a gold medal triumph for Scotland at the 2021 World Mixed Doubles Championship and will represent Great Britain in Beijing this year.
Mouat has won a gold medal in European competition, a silver medal at the World Championships this season, and a world-mixed doubles crown with Jen Dodds. Mouat claims he has received nothing but encouragement during this time.
“It didn’t matter if I was a little different from the other people I was playing with and against,” he explained. “At the end of the day, we’re all simply athletes competing for the same objective, regardless of sexuality or who we want to spend our lives with.”
Mouat will captain Britain’s four-person curling squad and play in mixed doubles in Beijing. He’ll be one of a few LGBTQ Winter Olympians still to be chosen.
Ireen Wüst – Team Netherlands
Ireen Wüst, full name Irene Karlijn Wüst, is a Dutch speed skater who won 11 Olympic medals, including five gold, making her the most decorated speed skater in Olympic history. She was born on April 1, 1986, in Goirle, Netherlands. In addition, she won the most medals of any Dutch Olympian.
Ireen Wüst holds the record for most Olympic medals in women’s speed skating. She earned her first Olympic gold medal in 2006, and she has since won at least one gold medal at each Winter Olympics, totaling 11 medals. She is also the most successful Olympic athlete in the Netherlands’ history. In 2009, Wüst became the first person to acknowledge her bisexuality openly.
By completing the 2014 World Cup season, Wüst had amassed 23 individual career victories, including 16 in the 1,500 metres. With ten, she has the most World Cup victories of any woman in the sport in the team pursuit. Wüst finished in the top three of the overall World Cup standings for three years (2012–14), including winning the overall title in 2013.
Andrew Blaser – Team USA
Andrew Blaser, the first publicly out homosexual man to secure an Olympic berth in the sport of skeleton, will be the lone guy representing the United States in the sport at the Winter Olympics in Beijing.
After the news, Blaser told Outsports, “Making this team is honestly simply unbelievable.”
Blaser will compete in skeleton alongside Kelly Curtis and Katie Uhlaender for Team USA.
USABS CEO Aron McGuire remarked, “USA Bobsled and Skeleton is tremendously proud of the three athletes selected to represent Team USA in skeleton at the 2022 Olympics.” “It was a tough fight to make the squad, and it came down to the final race.”
Andrew Blaser participated in volleyball, the decathlon, and cheerleading before attempting the deadly sport of skeleton, in which a rider hurtles down an ice luge track on a tiny sled. His favourite movies are Love Actually and Mean Girls, and he majored in Food & Nutrition at the University of Idaho.
Belle Brockhoff – Team Australia
Belle Brockhoff, an Australian snowboarder, will compete in her third Olympics, her first since tearing her ACL in 2018. She came out as a lesbian in 2013 and criticized Russia’s discriminatory and anti-gay policies as the host of the Sochi Winter Olympics. She’s seeking to add Olympic gold to her recent World Championships victory in 2021.
Brockhoff’s family has a long history of participating in winter sports. Her uncle, Peter Brockhoff, competed in Alpine skiing at the 1960 and 1964 Winter Olympics, her grandfather Harold Brockhoff was one of Mt Buller’s early pioneers, and her great aunt, Joyce Brockhoff, has a run named after her at Mt Hotham, Victoria, in honour of her work promoting women’s participation in snow sports.
Brockhoff raced in various snowboard disciplines, including Parallel Giant Slalom on the World Cup circuit, before focusing on Snowboard Cross for her debut World Cup season in 2012/13.
Brockhoff was a force to be reckoned with in the 2016/17 season, having won two World Cups (Montafon, Austria, and Bansko, Bulgaria) and silver in Feldberg, Germany. After the season, she finished third overall in the World Cup rankings despite a knee injury.
Brockhoff has been one of the most consistent riders so far in the 2021-2022 World Cup season, making it to the semi-final round in all of the tournaments he has raced in and finishing in the top three in the rankings. World Cup tournaments at Montafon, Austria (silver) and Cervinia, Italy (gold) have produced podium finishes (bronze).
Brockhoff and Jarryd Hughes, the gold medalists at the 2021 World Championships, reunited for the only snowboard cross mixed team event in Montafon, Austria, finishing fourth.
Kévin Aymoz – Team France
It’s difficult enough to make your Olympic debut. However, the extra strain of competing in his first Olympics adds to the pressure for French figure skater Kévin Aymoz, who is competing in his first Olympics after having his summer ruined by injury.
After suffering a groyne ailment known as athletic pubalgia, Aymoz avoided any ice exercise for nearly three months to prevent aggravating his problem. After being permitted to return to the ice, he then sustained a toe injury, forcing him to withdraw from the annual Skate America tournament in October.
Following an exciting 2021, Aymoz will concentrate on the European Championships in January before shifting gears to the Olympics. As part of the French figure skating delegation in Beijing, he’ll participate with fellow citizens and gay ice dancer Guillaume Cizeron.
Aymoz, the incumbent French National Champion and five-time winner, intends to dominate the Olympics like he has conquered French figure skating. It will be his first time competing in the Olympics.
Jason Brown – Team USA
An American figure skater, Jason Brown, made his debut in 2010, winning the U.S. Junior National Championship. In 2014, he made his Olympic debut, winning a bronze medal for his free skate in the team event. He finished eighth in the men’s singles event in Sochi. Brown was appointed the first alternate for the PyeongChang Olympic squad in 2018.
Brown served as team captain and finished sixth overall on the men’s side in the 2021 World Championships, where Team USA won silver.
Last year, Jason Brown utilised a social media post to come out during Pride Month.
“I think that love will always triumph and that each narrative will develop in its unique manner.” Mine is starting to take shape. “I’m homosexual, and that’s still a work in progress…”
Brown recently parted ways with his signature ponytail, but he luckily chose to preserve his incredible talent and charisma!
Brown, now 27, had a successful pre-Olympic performance on the Grand Prix circuit, winning silver at Skate Canada and bronze at the Internationaux de France, marking the first time he medaled in both Grand Prix assignments.
Guillaume Cizeron – Team France
Cizeron is a French ice dance legend. He has won the World Championships four times, the European Championships five times in a row, and the French National Championships seven times. He dances with Gabriella Papadakis, and the two are hoping to build on their 2018 Olympic silver medal triumph with additional gold this time around.
Cizeron wrote in Out in 2020 on how skating had evolved into far more than just a sport for him.
“The 2018 Olympic silver medalists, four-time World champions (2015–2016, 2018–2019), five-time consecutive European champions (2015–2019), the 2017 and 2019 Grand Prix Final champions, and six-time French national champions (2015–2020),” Cizeron and Papadakis said. In the Grand Prix series, they have ten gold medals.”
Cizeron said he was happy with the favourable response despite not believing uploading the Instagram photo was a big thing. He remarked, “It made me happy.” “Despite everything, 200 or 300 individuals, out of 84,000, had quit following me at the time.” He currently has 85,600 followers on Instagram.
Cizeron is an excellent illustration of the strength of the public outcry. While he has never been compelled to do so, and while he is accurate that straight athletes are never forced to make the same decision, his presence will make a difference. It always does.
Amber Glenn – Team USA
Amber Glenn, an American figure skater, is well-known in the sport as poised to make a name for herself as a top competitor. The 2014 Junior National Champion of the United States has steadily progressed through the senior divisions. The 20-year-old Texan will be one among the favourites to win an old national title and head the United States delegation to the World Figure Skating Championships in Montreal next month.
Glenn, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual, will compete in the women’s singles as an alternative for Team USA. After growing ill and testing positive for the virus, she was forced to withdraw from the US National Championships last week.
Ashley Cain-Gribble, the US pair champion, is a role model for her, and her example has aided her progress. “When she skates in front of thousands of people, I try to follow Ashley’s example and her entire demeanour,” Glenn told the Dallas Voice. “She exudes strength and self-assurance. For that, I have a lot of respect and admiration for her.”
Glenn’s remarks reflected a lot of what she’s been known for on and off the ice, as well as on social media. She has been candid about the sport’s highs and lows, and she frequently utilises her platform to inspire younger skaters. Glenn’s announcement received a lot of attention on social media, as well as a lot of support.
Timothy LeDuc – Team USA
Timothy LeDuc wants everyone to know that he is gay.
Even while he and his partner, Ashley Cain, have aimed for this year’s Nationals and a shot at the Olympics, the world-class couples figure skater has kept being out and proud at the forefront of his thoughts.
Because so many LGBTQ youngsters still face hardships today, being an out homosexual athlete with a national presence is crucial to LeDuc.
With their latest success in Nashville, Tennessee, LeDuc and partner Ashley Cain-Gribble have won their second U.S. National Championship. The 31-year-old LeDuc identifies as nonbinary and recently said that trainers and others had encouraged them to hide their sexuality and gender identity. In contrast, one skater said she didn’t want to risk skating with a homosexual partner.
He stated, “I felt I had more to contribute.” “I wanted to push myself to be the best skater I could be, and I didn’t think I’d succeeded.”
So he went back to couples skating and, according to U.S. Figure Skating’s recommendation, he met his new partner, Cain.
When LeDuc was looking for a partner, he had already encountered homophobia, with one of his possible partners’ mother telling him that if he wanted to skate with her daughter, he needed to stay in the closet. One prospective female companion even expressed concern that he wasn’t the “type of homosexual” who would abandon her in a moment of weakness.
Figure skating has significant roots in a relatively conservative American society despite its external look.
Paul Poirier – Team Canada
Poirier, 29, won a global bronze medal in ice dancing with Piper Gilles, and the two represented Canada at the 2018 Winter Olympics. In an interview with Glory, a Toronto-based sports and cultural publication, he revealed himself.
“I haven’t talked about [being a homosexual athlete] that much, especially in a public context,” Poirier added. “I’ve always had the mentality that my personal life is my personal life, and that my life outside of skating is my life outside of skating.” All of those things haven’t necessarily bled into each other. Next year’s run-up to the Olympic Games, I believe there will be possibilities to convey what we do and who we are with a much larger audience, and I will not miss out on that opportunity.
“This Pride Month is a great chance for me to speak a little bit more about my journey, how my sexuality has shaped who I am as a person and an athlete, and possibly serve as a role model for so many young gay athletes who are growing up and unsure how to navigate the world of sport.”