As we gear up for Paris 2024, join us as we look back at the LGBTQIA pioneers who competed in the past
BY YASMIN VINCE, IMAGES BY FLICKR, WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, AND INSTAGRAM (@THEQUINNY5)
The Tokyo Games were dubbed the Rainbow Olympics because of the record number of queer athletes selected. At 186, this number was almost triple the previous record set in Rio, which, again, was almost twice the number of the record set four years earlier in London.
The queer community is finally being represented in meaningful numbers, but LGBTQIA competitors have always been a part of the games.
To celebrate, here is a queer history of the Olympics.
1928 – Renée Sintenis becomes the first queer medallist… for sculpting
No, the early Olympic committees did not consider sculpting to be a sport, however physically strenuous it is. But, from 1912-1948, the games included an art competition that awarded medals for sport-inspired artwork.
Renée won the bronze medal in 1928 for her sculpture Footballeur. Though she was married to fellow artist Emil Rudolf Weiß, Renée was widely thought to be a lesbian and is rumoured to have had a relationship with her housekeeper Magdalena Goldmann.
During the Nazi regime, Renée was expelled from the Academy of Arts, while her work was labelled “Degenerate”. She was prevented from returning to the Olympics. This was a result of both her Jewish ancestry and her androgynous appearance.
1932 – Babe Didrikson and Stella Walsh become the first queer gold medallists
Babe set four world records and won two gold medals at her first Olympics. She’s the only track and field athlete to win separate Olympic medals in running, throwing and jumping events, being the 80-metre hurdles, javelin and a silver in the high jump.
In 1950, Babe met Betty Dodd, the woman she would be in a relationship with for the rest of her life. As a result, Babe is considered to be the first sapphic gold medallist.
At the same games, Stella Walsh won gold in the 100m sprint. After her murder in 1980, her autopsy revealed she was intersex, meaning she joined Babe as the first LGBTQIA gold medallists in Olympic history.
Stella was submitted to sex verification tests during her Olympic career. Others subjected to this include Maria Martinez-Patino, a Spanish hurdler, and Caster Semenya.
1936 – The Nazi Regime
The Nazis had a terrible impact on queer competitors at the Olympics. Otto Peltzer, a German track star who had competed in 1928, was arrested in 1935 for homosexuality and only released after promising he would stay out of the sport.
The Nazis’ approach to queer athletes was twofold. While many of their own LGBTQIA competitors were arrested and sent to concentration camps, the party also targeted foreign queer athletes in the hopes of turning them into spies.
One woman they recruited was Violette Morris, a cross-dressing lesbian. She had won several gold medals at the first two Women’s World Games, the female alternative to the Olympics but they banned her from further games after she refused to stop cross-dressing.
Preying on her anger, the Nazis invited her to the 1936 Olympics, hoping to switch her loyalties. Violette began to spy on France, passing information to the Nazis from her position as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross.
1982 – The Gay Games
Though things improved post-war, queer athletes were still not completely accepted or safe when competing in the Olympics. To combat this, gay Olympian Tom Waddell created the Gay Olympics, a version of the games just for the LGBTQIA community.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) sued the organisation over its use of the word “Olympic” and had to change its name to Gay Games.
2005 – The London bid is the first to include a commitment to diversity
The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) promised to work towards an inclusive Games in their bid to be the 2012 host city. After being awarded the games, LOCOG publicly supported LGBTQIA campaigns.
2016 – A great year for same-sex couples
At the Rio Olympics, Helen and Kate Richardson-Walsh were on the gold medal-winning women’s hockey team. As they got married in 2013, they became the first married couple to win together since 1920, when Cyril and Dorothy Wright got the gold for sailing.
The same year Marjorie Yuri Enya walked onto the field after the final of the women’s rugby sevens and proposed to her girlfriend, Isadora Cerullo, who was on the Brazilian team.
2021 – The first openly non-binary and transgender athletes compete
The Canadian women’s soccer team featured midfielder Quinn. In 2020, they came out as non-binary, so even though they competed in 2016, 2021 marked the first time an openly non-binary athlete participated in the games.
This was also the first year an openly transgender athlete competed. New Zealand’s weightlifter Laurel Hubbard was selected for the Olympic team after winning several elite medals.
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