Kirsty Gilmore will be the lone badminton star hoisting the rainbow flag at this year’s Olympics, with 173 athletes from 49 countries taking part in five tournaments.
But the British athlete is happy to speak about the joys he gets from being part of Team LGBTQ.
This will be Gilmore’s third Olympic Games, but his first since coming out as gay during a podcast interview in November 2021.
Her Instagram profile includes a Pride flag and also states that her pronouns are she/her and they/them.
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On Monday morning in Paris, the 30-year-old from Glasgow began her singles challenge with a comfortable two-set win over Azerbaijan’s Keisha Fatima Azzah.
She was then asked what it meant to her to be one of at least 191 athletes who have come out publicly, a record number for the Olympics.
“I’m very proud,” Gilmore told SportsBeat, “that I’m the only badminton player to come out. It was by chance, it was unintentional!”
“Being my true self in public is first a privilege and secondly a necessity. On the court I’m showing my true self, being very vulnerable and, to put it bluntly, chasing my dreams.”
“You have to be who you are. For me personally, hiding parts of myself doesn’t help me perform better. I’m proud to have come out.”
🏸🇬🇧🏳️🌈 Kirsty Gilmore wins #badminton opener #Paris2024! #TeamGB #TeamLGBTQ https://t.co/WL4fouUXWc
— Sports Media LGBT+ (@SportsMediaLGBT) July 29, 2024
According to records collected by historian Tony Scupham Bilton, Gilmore is the sixth known LGBTQ badminton player to compete in the Olympics.
Among the previous five are Denmark’s Christina Pedersen and Camilla Rytter-Juhl, who won the silver medal in the women’s doubles at the 2016 Rio Olympics, after which the pair went public with their relationship.
The other three known LGBTQ athletes are women: Gina Gomez was part of the U.S. team at the 1996 Atlanta Games, Sujira Ekmongkolpaisarn of Thailand competed at the 2000 Sydney Games, and Eefje Muthkens of the Netherlands came out at the 2016 Rio Games.
Gilmour, ranked 24th in the world, will need to beat China’s He Bingjiao in her next Group N match on Tuesday night to progress to the last 16.
There’s a tough battle ahead. The two players met last month at the Indonesia Open, with He, ranked eighth in the world, emerging victorious, marking his fourth consecutive win over Gilmore.
“We’ve had some really close matches in the past,” the Scotsman told the Daily Record. “I’ve won a couple and she’s won more recently.”
“I’m really looking forward to it and see it as a really positive opportunity to showcase what I can do and play some good badminton.”
