Olympics: More and more LGBTQ athletes are celebrating success at the Olympics

When María Pérez sat down in the hall for the press conference, she appeared confident. “All that has changed for me now is that a circle has closed,” said the woman who had recently celebrated behind the finish line with a pained face. The Spaniard won gold in the mixed walking relay on Wednesday together with her teammate Álvaro Martín. It was Pérez’s second medal in Paris, having previously won silver in the individual.

And Pérez immediately presented himself as a family man. »We now have to celebrate this success with our loved ones. They’re the ones who are behind the most.” While such a statement sounds like a common phrase about high-performance sports, in the case of the 28-year-old it still had a socio-political dimension in 2024. Pérez lives with her wife, the musician Noe Moorillas. In Spain she is known not only as an athlete, but also as an advocate for the recognition of sexual diversity.

Pérez is now in illustrious company in Paris. At the Olympic Games, more athletes than ever identify as part of the LGBTQ community and openly identify as lesbian, gay, bi, trans or otherwise queer. And if you count all these people together as an imaginary delegation of athletes, they actually play a strong role in the medal table. As of Tuesday afternoon, such a “Team LGBTQ” would be in eleventh place.

That would put you just behind the Netherlands and Germany, but ahead of Canada, New Zealand, Hungary or Sweden. This is reported by the portal outsports.com, which specializes in LGBTQ issues and sports and has been listing such an imaginary team for several years, which consists of all current Olympic participants who feel like they belong here. In Paris, “Team LGBTQ” has won six gold medals, eleven silver medals and eight bronze medals. It might not have been the end yet.

That delegation in Paris consists of 195 athletes. She has never been so big. In terms of numbers, the team would now be in 15th place, directly ahead of Hungary and Belgium. For comparison: Germany is represented by 428 people. The current position in the medal table can therefore be seen as a strong performance.

But the operators of that website find an even more important reason to be proud of the achievements presented, because the results so far put them “ahead of every single country that criminalizes homosexuality.” In addition, the number of elite athletes who openly identify as LGBTQ is growing rapidly in the most recent editions of the Olympics. In 2021 there were 186 people in Tokyo, in 2016 in Rio only 56 and in 2012 in London only 23.

Keeping your sexual identity or orientation private is not always a private decision. On the sidelines of the Paris Games, Belgian Charline Van Snick told the AP news agency: »During my career I was told that I had to be straight in order to generate media attention and sponsors. I was pushed there so I couldn’t really be who I wanted to be.” Olympic bronze in judo 2012 in London wasn’t enough to find sponsors? There are many similar examples.

In any case, it can be assumed that the true number of an LGBTQ team is significantly higher. Assuming the usual estimate that around ten percent of all people are homosexual, around 1,000 of the around 10,000 athletes in Paris would have to be gay or lesbian. More queer people could increase the number.

What also suggests that the number of unreported cases is high: the ratio between women and men in “Team LGBTQ” is around 9 to 1, apparently because gay athletes still fear more hostility after coming out. And while more than 200 nations are at the start, the outed team is made up of athletes from only 26 countries – plus the international refugee team, which includes Cindy Ngamba. The countries that sent openly LGBTQ people into the race are mainly in America, Western Europe and Southeast Asia.

Nine come from France. But that alone seems to be too much for some in the country that presents itself as a cosmopolitan host. Before the games, the conservative lobby group Citizen Go launched a petition against the Pride House in Paris, which offers queer-friendly programming. 13,500 people have signed. Their argument: A Pride House would exclude everyone who can’t do anything with it. Well, that’s the point of it all. It should be a safe space.

The attempt to stop the house failed. In the center of the French capital, it is not only operational, but highly frequented. There’s a lot to celebrate for “Team LGBTQ” right now.