Not far from the site of the attacks on the World Trade Centre, Mark Bingham will be remembered for his grit and his heart, and the game he loved.
The Bingham Cup, a rugby tournament open to gay teams, will be held this weekend. It pays tribute to Bingham, who was gay and believed to be one of the passengers who fought hijackers on the United flight which crashed in rural Pennsylvania five years ago.
”Mark’s legacy was that he showed a lot of people that a gay man can be a good athlete in a rough contact sport like rugby and that a gay man can also be heroic,” said Scott Glaessgen of the New York Gotham Knights, who met Bingham through their shared interest in the sport.
The tournament runs from Friday until Sunday on Randall’s Island on the East River between Manhattan and Queens.
Glaessgen said Bingham’s example inspired the growth of gay rugby from a handful of teams in 2001 to 40 worldwide. About 800 players on 26 men’s teams and two women’s teams are participating in the biennial tournament.
Why gay rugby?
Players say rugby’s toughness belies the cultural stereotype of a gay man.
”These are people who thought that drama club would be their thing when they were in high school,” said 40-year-old Toby Butterfield of the Gotham Knights, a lawyer who grew up playing rugby in England.
Knights players said that as young gay men they often felt that sports teams would not welcome them. They relish the camaraderie that rugby builds both on the field and off.
”You sort of inherit this huge family, with all of its intrigues and subplots,” said Jeff Simpson (34) a web designer for a toy company.
Lots of the Knights had never played team sports before rugby.
”Many of them come to our boot camp not knowing how to throw a ball, not knowing how to tackle,” said Knights coach John Dent.
”It’s a whole new experience.”
Rugby is outside of the mainstream in the United States, where it has club status on university campuses, but it is hugely popular around the world.
”It’s like baseball is here,” said Michelle Lee, a spokesperson for Australian Consul General John Olsen, who welcomed Sydney’s team at a reception at the consulate on Tuesday in New York.
The first two Bingham Cups — in 2002 and 2004 — were won by the San Francisco Fog. To win again, the Fog will have to contend with a tough Sydney team. The Sydney Convicts narrowly lost in the semifinals to San Francisco in 2004 and have steadily improved since.
In New York, the Knights also compete against straight teams in the metropolitan region, compiling a 4-1-5 record this spring.
Derrick Marshall, a 23-year-old research analyst for a health care union and an occasional opera singer, joined the Knights three weeks ago. Marshall was inspired after seeing a TV special about Chicago’s gay rugby team, the Dragons. He studies the rule book on the subway and brings his asthma inhaler to practices.
The Bingham Cup comes at a time of heightened interest into what happened aboard Flight 93, which was dramatised in the recently released United 93.
Bingham played for the University of California’s national champion rugby team. Glaessgen, a 36-year-old paramedic, said Bingham would be honoured to have a tournament named after him, but also a little embarrassed.
”He was just a very unassuming person,” ”Glaessgen said. – Sapa-AP