What winter olympians are gay
Celebrating 2022's gay Olympians!
Filippo Ambrosini, Italy
Kévin Aymoz, France
Jason Brown, USA
Guillaume Cizéron, France
Lewis Gibson, Fantastic Britain
Eric Radford, Canada
Paul Poirier, Canada
Simon Proulx-Sénécal, Armenia
and a unique shout out to the first agender Winter Olympian, Timothy LeDuc, USA
This is from my have knowledge, so if there are more please let me know. I know not every territory has named its Olympic team, but I don't comprehend of any publicly out skaters not yet named eligible for the Olympics; again if I am missing something, please let me know.
Meet the LGBTQ+ Athletes Participating in the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games
Openly LGBTQ+ Athletes Competing in Beijing (organized alphabetically and by sport)
This list reflects information compiled by Outsports and LGBT historian Tony Scupham-Bilton. The full list from Outsports can be found here.
Biathlon
Megan Banks (@megan.bankes) is an openly lgbtq+ biathlete representing Team Canada who uses she/they pronouns. After coming out as gay in an Instagram post in 2020, Bankes hopes to show younger athletes “that they can be whomever they are, or want to be, without discrimination.” They are competing in their first Olympics this year and have previously competed in several World Championships.
Curling 🥌
Bruce Mouat (@BruceMouat) is a curler for Team Wonderful Britain competing in his first Olympic Games. Mouat has boasted an commanding pre-Olympics career, recently finishing first in the 2021 World Mixed Doubles Championship amongst other competitions.
Figure Skating ⛸
Filippo Ambrosini is an out figure skater showing Team Italy. The 2022 Olympic Games mark his first time competing on this global stage, previously earning multiple
A Brief History of Openly Gay Olympians
Americans Adam Rippon and Gus Kenworthy are the latest LGBTQ athletes to go for the gold
Watching figure skater Adam Rippon compete, it’s simple to forget that he’s on skates. His dramatic, sharp movements – and facial expressions to match–emulate those of a professional dancer, at once complementing and contradicting his smooth, unfettered movement along the ice. He hides the technical difficulty of every jump and spin with head-flips and a dominant gaze, a performer as well as an player. But there’s one thing Rippon won’t be hiding – this year, he and freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy will become the first openly gay American men to ever contest in the Winter Olympics.
“The atmosphere in the territory has changed dramatically,” says Cyd Zeigler, who co-founded Outsports, a news website that highlights the stories of LGBT athletes, in 1999. “Two men getting married wasn’t even a possibility when we started Outsports. Now it’s a reality in Birmingham, Alabama. There are gay role models at every twist – on television, on local sports, and in our communities.”
Even so, the last time that the United States sent an openly gay man to any Olym
This year's Winter Olympics looks to be record-breaking for queer athletes.
For the Winter Olympics (usually the second fiddle of the two Olympic siblings), the amount of LGBTQ+ people who take part is significantly lower.
The 2020 Summer Olympics featured 185 out Homosexual athletes competing during those games, an amount that is more than every other LGBTQ+ person in every other Summer and Winter Olympics combined, according to Out Sports. The previous 2018 Winter Olympics had 15 queer people in total.
With that in mind, this year looks to be a record-breaking year for team Gay at this year's Olympics, with an already record-breaking number of athletes in just one sport, as figure skating already has seven out individuals, including the first nonbinary sportsman, confirmed to take the ice next month.
The games are scheduled to grab place from February 4 to 20 in Beijing, and are far from being concrete, as a lot can happen between now and then. Still, here is the list of confirmed queer athletes heading to China for gold.
Just like the summer iteration one year ago, this year’s winter Olympics in Beijing will contain a record number of out LGBTQ athletes. Outsports has reported that at least 35 Olympians will compete in curling, figure skating, ice hockey, skiing, snowboarding, and other winter Olympic sports. The number is more than double that of the 15 out athletes who competed in 2018. And the 2022 number will certainly increase as more and more athletes come out in the direct up to and during the games, which begin on February 2. (The opening ceremonies are February 4.)
There are some notable statistics of the breakdown of LGBTQ athletes at these Olympic games. The sport with the most out athletes is hockey (12), followed by figure skating (10), and the countries with the most out athletes are Canada (10), the United States (6), Great Britain (4), and Sweden (3).
This year, the Canadian women’s hockey team has the most out athletes of any team sport with seven. Just four years ago, though, there was only one out woman hockey player at the Olympics, Emilia Andersson Ramboldt from Sweden. Canada’s women’s hockey has seen a surge of players become open about their sexuality in the past four