Kevin Mitchell Gay Games
Nothing really prepares you for the Gay Games. Certainly not 47 years of heterosexuality or a month on the testosterone circuit known as the World Cup. If there is another place on God’s earth where 15E000 of his creations are as nice to each other at one time, it was not immediately apparent on Friday night.
It was the night before the gala opening at the Amsterdam Arena of an allegedly serious international competition across 29 disciplines from football to bridge, but which, in reality, will form an excuse to bond, party and spread the word.
Last week, 50E000 spectators gave their seal of approval to what should prove to be an interesting gig. And there was not a hooligan in sight.
They have come from 60 countries, in all shapes and sizes. I think it was when I was standing between a lusciously legged, red-haired lesbian and a fat guy in a big red dress who called himself Maxine (”Don’t mind me, I’m just here to be beautiful”) that it sunk in that this was a sports event not like other sports events.
The organisers of the fifth of these extravaganzas since the first one in California in 1982 had invited the media, bent and straight, to the oldest church in Amsterdam, and bonhomie was suddenly an inadequate word.
Jip van Leeuwen is one of the key organisers. He explained why the Gay Games are different, but not so different. ”The old Olympics and the new Olympics also had this idea, sport and culture together,” he said. ”Tom Waddell, in 1982, also started with this ideal – but for homosexual people.”
Dr Waddell, an American Olympic athlete, founded the Games to promote what the gay community calls ”visibility”. There were 1E300 at his first games and, when he died of Aids in 1988, it was a burgeoning concern. Now these games are being called ”the biggest gay and lesbian event of the century”.
Evidence that it mimics the worldwide explosion of ”straight sport” abounds. The city’s deputy mayor recognised the tournament as not just a sporting occasion but a ”work and money” opportunity for Amsterdam, a fact underlined by the healthy sponsorship attached to it.
While it is some way short of the advertising free-for-all of the Atlanta Olympics, there is nothing here among the many and varied billboards to support the contention by the British Advertising Standards Authority last week that gay images are ”turning off consumers”.
Probably two-thirds of the 15E000 participants are athletes of varying abilities, including several British teams.
Visibility would seem to be no longer a problem; but Susanna Tol, a media co-ordinator, echoed a gay mantra when she said: ”Tolerance is not acceptance.”
The strategy is to use sport as a conduit to discussion and cultural assimilation, which is why there is as much emphasis on activities such as dance, song and art as there is on badminton, football, karate and the regular array of Olympic sports.
Van Leeuwen says: ”That is the main issue here. We try to do things together. When you go to our state gallery, you will see the Olympic gods of sport. That’s culture. But it’s also sport. A little complicated, but I love it. That is the connection.
”I can understand that a heterosexual audience sometimes might think these games are not so competitive. But they are a celebration too. Also, to do your personal best. Maybe to break a record too. And, what is more important, to participate. I think everybody can join in, also heterosexuals. There are no limits.
‘At the Olympics it is exclusive, naturally. Others cannot participate. Here you can say, ‘Okay, I like it,’ and nobody says, ‘But can you do it?’ Now we have the help of the international sports organisations. They sanction our events. We have to do it like they say we should do it. Which is right.”
There is a danger that this sport-for- all approach, admirable as it is, will so dilute excellence as to make competition meaningless. After all, in recent weeks sport has entertained the Goodwill Games, the Island Games and the Celtic Games; a level or two up, there have been the Asian Games and next month in Malaysia there will be our own quaint anachronism, the Commonwealth Games, bathed again in friendliness.
And where will it stop? If they ever have a Left-handed Games, limited to short people, born in Malawi in 1950, there will not be many people who can go the distance with this reporter for a gold medal in, say, knuckle- cracking.
You don’t have to do drugs to appreciate Amsterdam. But it helps. And you don’t have to be gay, apparently, to enjoy the Gay Games. ”Anyone can enter the Gay Games,” says Sue Emerson, of the British Gay and Lesbian Sports Federation. ”It’s very difficult to give a gay test.”
Yet, as friendly and inclusive as the organisers are, I did not see the international sporting media caravan rolling through Amsterdam in force. In fact, Her Majesty’s press looked to be in a minority of one. ”I will be honest”’ says Van Leeuwen, ”the media are very supportive but they try to find things that are not so fantastic.
”And I’m sad about that. They say, ‘Ah, but this is not top sport.’ Okay, there are only maybe 10, 15 or 20 athletes here that are so, but I am a little disappointed that they put the accent on excellence.”
We diverge there, but Van Leeuwen is concerned with wider issues. ”It’s very difficult for straight sportsmen and women to come out. I myself was a sportsman, only five years ago I came out. I’m 55 now. It was hard in the beginning but after that it was okay.
”My sports were handball, track and field and javelin. I always felt very upset. I couldn’t be myself. Now there are homosexual swimming groups in the Netherlands and they participate in the normal – I say normal! – swimming competitions. Everybody knows they are homosexual men and women but nobody minds. It’s fully accepted.
”There are also a group of rowers. They said, ‘Shall we make a group together, or shall we row at the club there is?’ They have chosen the latter. There are now 50 gay rowers in a very old rowing club in Amsterdam, Willem III, and they are totally integrated. Everybody knows and I think this is the beginning.”
But tolerance – let alone acceptance – is not universal. ”There are no gay soccer players, of course. But I know of the situation in England where Justin Fashanu said he was homosexual and then he killed himself. That’s a very sad story, but not only in England. I think we have here the same story in the Netherlands.
”Amsterdam has always been more liberal. I think by having the Gay Games here a lot of eyes will be opened in the rest of Holland and the rest of Europe. People will see that homosexuals are not only drag queens.”
The love of physique is important in the gay community, which explains why the bodybuilding competition will be a whooping and hollering highlight. ”Yes, that is true, physicality is important in our community.
”But in the heterosexual world it is the same. They like to see beautiful women, Miss World and that kind of thing.”
Funny stuff, testosterone. It seems some days as if sport is awash in a sea of hormonal excess. So important has sport supposedly become, that no drug is too dangerous, no lie or slur too big, no tantrum too boorish.
No insular, chemically assisted cycling supermen here, though; no snarling fighters, like Mike Tyson, who exploded in front of a New Jersey hearing last week as he sought to persuade them to give him back his ear-biting licence. No brawls, no riots.
Just a lot of happy, shiny people.