EDGE goes to the Gay Games, part one: Opening ceremonies and a view of Cologne

We were standing in front of the museum exhibit, a panel in a timeline recreation of the growth and evolution of the LGBT sports movement. It was the end of a week of smiles, sweat and tears, of dreams born and confidence won. A week of rowdy parties, moving concerts, grueling competition, and robust camaraderie. And for me, a fractured nose that kept my head filled with the sweet fragrance of blood.

He was a young Irishman, a novice runner there with his swimmer boyfriend. While his partner swam, he had raced in the first track meet of his life, and though he did not medal, he had achieved his goal of reaching the finals in all of his events. Now he was hooked and ready to return home to join a club and pursue the sport seriously.

Standing next to me as we chatted about the history behind the exhibit, his eyes and face seemed to glow in the afternoon shadows of the German Sport and Olympic Museum. Glowing with life, glowing with joy, glowing with discovery.

"This is amazing," he said as we turned to face each other. "Every gay person should do this."

And that pretty well summed up the whys and wherefores of Gay Games VIII in Cologne.

From July 31 to Aug. 8, nearly 10,000 artists and LGBT and allied athletes from across the globe competed in more than 30 disciplines from shooting and rock climbing to volleyball and dance.

Sports are barely publicly acknowledged in the gay consciousness, even though literally hundreds of thousands of LGBT athletes belong to hundreds of sports organizations around the world. Having been immersed in sports virtually all of my life and having always thought that what I learned in sports was disproportionately responsible for all of the professional and social success I have had, I always found that lack of queer sports awareness surprising and even sad. Every four years it seems when some people hear the Gay Games mentioned they ask, "Why do gays have to have their own event? Is it really necessary?"

In a word, yes.

This was my third trip to Cologne and my second to the Gay Games, so I was not really surprised by anything I saw this go-round. When Cologne was the surprise selection over Paris and Johannesburg for Gay Games VIII, I assured all who asked me that they could expect efficiently run events, friendly people, beautiful architecture-and great food at a fraction of what they might expect to pay in New York or San Francisco.

Cologne delivered in spades.

Economic times being what they are, the opening ceremonies at RheinEnergieStadion were short on production frills. But none of that mattered as we marched in under a gently falling sprinkle. The energy among the athletes and in the crowd was palpable. The LGBT sports community was splintered when Montreal pulled out of negotiations to host the 2006 Gay Games and instead established the rival World Outgames. And though the 2006 Gay Games in Chicago were a rousing success with 12,000 participants and a budget that finished in the black, the event itself lacked the international feel that make the games so special for our community. For 2010, the Aussies and Europeans were back with their Yankee counterparts. This would be a games to remember.

I marched into the stadium at the head of the procession, just behind representatives of the Federation of Gay Games and the Cleveland organizers. I marched along my "comrade in crime", fellow San Francisco wrestler Gene Dermody, who has competed in every Gay Games since they started in 1982. We carried the flags of Gay Games I and II and, dressed as we were in black shirts, looked like a couple of ninja warriors among our fellow white-shirted federation reps.

The parade of athletes who preceded and followed me that day in Cologne was impressive. They ranged from world champions such as powerlifter Chris Morgan, Olympians, such as Matthew Mitcham and Leigh-Ann Naidoo and David Kopay, the pioneer who was the first NFL player to come out; to novices in chess, bowling and track and field who just wanted to challenge themselves to be part of it all.
As I watched my fellow athletes continue to fill the stadium, I sat in the stands and reflected on what makes the Gay Games unique, valuable and irreplaceable.

First, there is the inconceivably fortuitous accident of its name-the Gay Games. When Dr. Tom Waddell put together the first event in 1982, he envisioned it as an Olympics to provide his fellow queer athletes with the same exhilarating experience he had had 14 years earlier as a decathlete in the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City: An opportunity to show the world that we had muscles, we had toughness, we could achieve greatness.

He called it the Gay Olympic Games.

Weeks before the event began, the U.S. Olympic Committee, which had never stopped events from being named "Olympics" previously, successfully sued to prevent San Francisco Arts and Athletics from using the word. Organizers were forced to get out markers and redact the word. The homophobic slight electrified participants and set an antagonistic tone between the games and the Olympic community for a decade, thawing only after they began to work together successfully to lift federal travel bans against HIV-infected attendees of the 1994 Gay Games in New York City and the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

We were left with the Gay ------- Games. Gay Games. What did that mean? What did it stand for?

If striking down the word "Olympics" was an attempt to bottleneck us, to force us to retreat to the locker room closet, it didn't work. Rather, it forced a soul-searching evaluation of the mission and a deeper commitment to the trademarked motto of the Gay Games: Participation, Inclusion and Personal Best.

The Gay Games are not merely for everyone: they are designed for everyone. Unlike the Olympics and every other major international sporting event, there are no qualifying events designed to weed out the non-elite athletes. Modified rules enable handicapped persons to play in virtually every sport and provide multiple age groups so people can compete on even terms with peers. There are no medal counts for countries. World-best times are set in swimming at the same time that novices gasp to follow far behind and finish.

The triumph is that they try and they finish.

You don't need to be gay to be in the Gay Games. You just have to have the courage to march with the banner.