While Gender and Sexuality shouldn’t matter when considering and celebrating the athletic achievements of others, the celebration of LGBT+ members in mainstream media can be key in both the self-acceptance and societal acceptance of LGBT+ rights. This is why I wanted to dedicate an athlete to each of the letters of the LGBT+ acronym and celebrate the successes they had in terms of athletic achievements.
Lesbian – Kate and Helen Richardson-Walsh:
In the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics, Kate and Helen were the first married lesbian couple to compete. The two played field hockey for Great Britain and Kate was the captain of the team. In total, they have competed in four Olympics, but Rio was their first one together since they married. Kate and Helen have been playing hockey together since they were teenagers and they have been in a relationship since 2008.
Gay – Glenn Burke:
Glenn Burke was a Major League Baseball (MLB) player for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Oakland A’s from 1976 to 1979. Glenn was the first MLB player to come out during his professional career, which meant that his friends and teammates were all aware of his sexuality. At the time, he also tried to discuss his sexuality with sportswriters and other journalists, but they never publicised his coming-out.
He had an autobiography published in 1995 and later, a documentary about his life was released in 2010, but both received little attention. It is speculated that this was because the sporting world did not seem ready to acknowledge and accept his sexuality. Even today, he is better known for the fact that he is one of the inventors of the ‘high five’ than for the fact that he was the first MBL player who was publicly out of the closet.
Bisexual – Ireen Karlijn Wüst:
Ireen is a Dutch long track allround speed skater who was named as Sportswoman of the World by Reuters in 2014. She is the most successful Dutch Olympian and is openly Bisexual. She won gold for the first time in 2006 when she was nineteen, which in turn also makes her the youngest Dutch Olympic champion in Winter Games history. Today, she has four gold, three silver and one bronze medal.
Besides her achievements in the Olympics, she is also a nine-time World single distance champion, five-time World allround champion, and a four-time European allround champion.
Transgender – Lana Lawless:
Lana is a professional golfer. She was born male, but she underwent gender reassignment surgery in 2005, before she began competing professionally.
In 2009 she won the ‘Long Drivers of America’ (LDA) title. The following year, the organization (LPGA) decided to amend their rules, so that female participants had to be ‘female at birth’ to be able to compete in the LDA.
Lana sued for her right to compete, arguing that she was documented as female by the state of California and that the organization should not be allowed to violate her rights in this manner especially whilst the LDA is held in California. The rule change was reversed and the lawsuit was officially dropped in 2011.
+ (Intersex) – Mokgadi Caster Semenya:
Semenya is a South African middle-distance runner. She was victorious at the 2009 World Championship, beating her previous time at the African Junior Championships – which was held just a month earlier – by four seconds. These quick improvements raised questions, which is why she was asked by the IAAF to take a sex verification test to determine her biological gender. The results of this sex test were never officially published, but the results were leaked in the press and have been much-discussed. The results of this test insinuate that Semenya has an intersex trait, which at the time was never officially confirmed or denied.
Later, Semenya did release an official statement through South African magazine YOU, which stated: “God made me the way I am and I accept myself.” And it is now known that she is an intersex cisgender woman with naturally elevated testosterone levels and XY chromosomes.
She has since been included in the the New Statesman’s 2010 list of “50 People That Matter.” and in Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People of 2019”. She has also won gold medals at 2012 and 2016 Olympics. However, due to new IAAF rules which came into force in 2019, women like Semenya are now barred from participating in 400m, 800m, and 1500m races if they do not take medication to lower their testosterone levels.