The Winter Olympic Games in Beijing are here, and Team LGBTQ+ will be hard-pressed to surpass their record medal haul at last year’s Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, with 55+ LGBTQ+ athletes taking home medals (and even sweeping the women’s soccer event)!
Bruce Mouat – Team Great Britain
Bruce Mouat, 27, is fresh off a gold medal performance at the 2021 World Mixed Doubles Championship representing Scotland and will compete for Great Britain in Beijing this year.
Ireen Wüst – Team Netherlands
Nobody has more Olympic medals in women’s speedskating than Ireen Wüst. She won her first Olympic gold in 2006, and has won at least one gold medal at every Winter Olympics since, netting a total of 11 medals so far. She’s also the most successful Olympic athlete in the history of the Netherlands. Wüst first discussed her bisexuality publicly in 2009.
Andrew Blaser – Team USA
Before Andrew Blaser tried his hand at the dangerous sport of skeleton, where a rider hurtles down an icy luge track on a small sled, he also competed in volleyball, the decathlon, and cheerleading. He majored in Food and Nutrition at the University of Idaho and his favorite movies are Love Actually and Mean Girls.
Kévin Aymoz – Team France
The five-time winner and reigning French National Champion, Aymoz hopes to dominate the Olympics the same way he has dominated French figure skating. This will be his first Olympics.
Jason Brown – Team USA
Jason Brown used a post to social media to come out during Pride Month last year. “I believe that love will always win, and every story will unfold differently for each individual. Mine unfolds a bit now. I’m gay, and that’s a story still being written…” Brown recently said goodbye to his trademark ponytail, but thankfully opted to keep his amazing talent and personality!
Guillaume Cizeron – Team France
Cizeron is a legend in French ice dancing. He’s a four-time World Champion, won the European Championships five years in a row, and is a seven-time French National Champion. He dances with partner Gabriella Papadakis, and the pair hope to follow up their 2018 Olympic silver medal with more golden performances this time around. In 2020, Cizeron wrote in Out how skating become far more than just a sport to him.
“I was lucky enough to find a space where I was able to express myself and feel included and supported. Figure skating wasn’t just a sport to me. The rink was the only place except home where I was lifted up and not torn down for my mannerisms. Skating brought me so much confidence and allowed me to discover myself in a safe environment. When I finally did get the courage to come out, I was fortunate enough to have a supportive family and to be born in a country where my existence wasn’t a crime.”
Paul Poirier – Team Canada
Poirier is fresh off his second Canadian National Championship title in ice dancing, and plans to open up and use his platform to bring visibility to LGBTQ+ athletes and community as he represents Team Canada this year.
“I’ve had this attitude that my private life is my private life and my life outside of skating is my life outside of skating,” Poirier told Glory last year. “I haven’t necessarily allowed all of those things to bleed together. I think with the lead-up to the Olympic Games in the next year, I definitely see opportunities to share what we do and who we are to a much wider audience, and that opportunity is not lost on me.
Eric Radford – Team Canada
Out figure skater Eric Radford made history in 2018 as the first openly gay man to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics. He added a bronze medal during the same games, to go with the silver at the 2014 Olympics. Radford married Spanish ice dancer Luis Fenero in 2019.
Gus Kenworthy – Team Great Britain
Gus Kenworthy qualified for his third, and final, Winter Olympics, this time with the country of his birth. The 30-year-old silver medalist at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi was born to an American father and a British mother in Chelmsford, Essex, England. He switched to Team Great Britain in 2019.
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