PARIS — When Charlene Van Snick had an affair with another female athlete after winning a bronze medal in judo at the 2012 London Olympics, she says her coach told her she needed to keep it a secret for the sake of her future career.
“It was a moment where I felt like I wasn’t myself,” said the retired Belgian Olympian, 33. “He said, ‘Charline, you have to fit into a box. Everyone is looking at you and you have to be heterosexual’ … I realised that this was not a place where I could be myself, this was not a place where I could be LGBTQ+.”
While the Olympics has made great strides since then — the 2024 Paris Olympics will feature a record number of openly LGBTQ+ athletes — advocates and athletes say international athletics still has a long way to go to open up to the queer community.
Friday’s opening ceremony featured LGBTQ+ icon DJ and producer Barbara Bucci surrounded by drag artists and dancers in a performance that critics interpreted as mocking Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” sparking protests from religious groups and others. Bucci said her lawyer is filing a complaint about threats and other harassment she received online after the show.
During the ceremony, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach delivered a speech sending the message that “in the Olympic world we all belong.”
Paris officials continued to promote participation Monday night as they opened the Olympic Pride House, set on a boat on the city’s famous Seine River, and France’s Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castella told The Associated Press that the Games are “sending a message of participation.”
“It is important for Paris to continue to fight against discrimination of all kinds,” Oudea Castella said. “We need to drive social progress, and I am here today because sport is a very powerful tool for doing so.”
A record 193 openly LGBTQ+ athletes competed at the Paris Olympics, surpassing the 186 athletes who competed at the COVID-19-postponed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, according to Outsports, a website that compiles a database of openly queer Olympic athletes.
The messages and recordings from Olympic officials were welcomed by many in the LGBTQ+ community, such as Matt Clark, 31, who was among those celebrating the opening of Pride House. He said Paris “started a tradition that will continue at other Olympic Games.”
“It’s going to spread awareness to other athletes and to young people around the world that being gay or queer is OK and that there is a future for you,” Clark said. “Five or 10 years ago, coaches would tell players not to come out, or it would ruin their careers. Now it’s becoming a stepping stone for their careers.”
Clarke gives the example of British diver Tom Daley, who has become a celebrity.
The number of openly LGBTQ+ Olympic athletes has skyrocketed in recent decades: Outsports co-founder Jim Budzinski said that when he started tracking athletes at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, there were only about five openly LGBTQ+ athletes.
“More and more people are coming out,” Budzinski said, “and they’re realizing that being visible is important because there’s no other way they’re going to get representation.”
Van Snick said it took her a long time to become truly comfortable with her sexuality, and that it was only once she stepped away from the spotlight that she was able to do so.
She noted that she regrets the ongoing debate over the exclusion of transgender athletes from Olympic competition.
“The world has grown since I was an Olympic medalist,” Van Snick said, “but when it comes to transgender issues, we still have a long way to go.”
Still, Budzinski and other LGBTQ+ advocates see the Paris Games as an opportunity for athletes from parts of the world where strict regulations against queer populations mean competitors cannot be openly gay.
“When they come to Paris, when they come to France, they can be their true selves,” said Jeremy Goupil, co-chair of Pride House, which first opened a queer community hub during the Olympics for the 2010 Games.
Goupil said safety concerns remain for many athletes. Dating apps like Grindr, Bumble and Tinder have long been used as a shield for gay athletes who want to connect with other queer people in the countries where they compete but don’t want to put themselves at risk in public.
But in past tournaments, some have used the app to check players’ heights, weights and locations in an attempt to catch players who were not officially competing, he said.
As a result, Grindr announced that in Paris it would disable location-based features within the Olympic Village and other official Games areas where athletes will be staying, allowing LGBTQ+ athletes to “connect authentically without the worry of prying eyes or unwanted attention.”
The app made a similar decision for the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
“If an athlete is not out or comes from a country where being LGBTQ+ is unsafe or illegal, using Grindr puts them at risk of exposure by inquisitive individuals seeking to identify and expose them on the app,” Grindr said in a statement.
The disabling of these features sparked criticism on social media last week after some users reported issues accessing the app in the Olympic Village.
“There are a lot of bad people out there, so you have to protect them, but at the same time, there are a lot of beautiful athletes,” Goupil said. “They want to meet someone, and it’s hard.”
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AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
