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And in case you missed it, I interviewed Jonathan Van Ness about the figure skating competition for Bustle. Paid subscribers can read bonus content from our interview, as well. I also spoke with Olympic ice dancer Tim Koleto ahead of the Games, and shared a Winter Olympics reading list for politically-inclined fans. I also wrote about how Heated Rivalry fans are being weird about Olympic athletes.
As usual for my content, “queer” content is more than just gay people doing sports. At Out of Your League, queerness is a politic that encompasses an anti-oppression framework. Let’s go.
After gay skier Gus Kenworthy posted an image of him writing “fuck ICE” in the snow with his own urine, he says he received violent threats. He doubled down on his criticism of the government agency that is currently terrorizing, murdering, and disappearing Americans, saying “it’s absolutely evil and awful and terrifying.”
Conor McDermott-Mostowy, nicknamed the “Secretary of Skate,” became the first openly gay male speedskater in Olympic history. McDermott-Mostowy finished 9th in the men’s 1000m race. “I am so proud of myself for getting here after missing the team four years ago,” the 27-year-old wrote on Instagram. “I’m proud to be the first [and] only openly gay man in Speedskating and the only one on Team USA this year.”
McDermott-Mostowy’s post also nodded to the current political climate in the U.S. “I’ve heard a lot of people say that I ‘must be conflicted’ to be a representative of the United States right now, but I cannot disagree more,” he wrote. “I think there is no more import time to be a representative of the US on the global stage. It is important to demonstrate that the US population is not a monolith. So many of us still hold the values that America, however imperfect in its realization of them, was built on.”
The Canadian women’s hockey team’s win over Finland last Thursday boasted 11 openly gay players, making it the most ever out players in a single Winter Olympics hockey game. According to Outsports, that makes it the gayest hockey game in Olympic history.
Speaking of the Canadian women’s hockey team, captain Marie-Philip Poulin returned from her injury in time for the game against Germany on Friday. She scored a goal, tying fellow Canadian Hayley Wickenheiser for the most goals all-time in Olympic play at 18.
Wives Kim Meylemans, of Belgium, and Nicole Silveira, of Brazil, competed against each other in women’s skeleton—on Valentine’s Day. Despite competing for different teams, they’ve named themselves “Team BB.” Neither of them medaled. “They share a chef, a sprinting coach, a physiotherapist and exercise equipment,” according to the New York Times. “They train together, travel together and watch videos of each other racing, offering tips. They are bunking together at the Olympic athletes’ village.”
The rollback of rights for gay people in host-country Italy inspired Meylemans to speak out more on behalf of her community. The couple are also ambassadors for the Pride House in Milan, which is a gathering space for LGBTQ+ athletes and fans.
The official Olympics sold out of a T-shirt featuring artwork from the 1936 Berlin Olympics in Nazi Germany. The fact that they were selling a shirt picturing the event’s official poster is deeply troubling. The IOC told the NYT that they “acknowledge the historical issues of ‘Nazi propaganda’ related to the Berlin 1936 Olympic Games.”
If you’d like to know more about the 1936 Games, which is also where the origins of sex testing in sport can be traced back to, I recommend reading Michael Waters’s book The Other Olympians.
Meanwhile, Berlin has placed a bid to host the 2036 Olympics for the 100th anniversary of the Nazi Games (they are also willing to host in 2040 or 2044). A group called “NOlympia Berlin” has already announced plans to oppose the bid by collecting enough signatures to force a referendum.
Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir are having a gay ol’ time in Milan. Not only are they both still alive on this season of The Traitors U.S., the longtime friends are broadcasting the figure skating competition for NBC and enjoying their adjoining hotel rooms.
The French ice dancing pair of Guillaume Cizeron (whose former partner, Gabriella Papadakis, has accused him of controlling behavior and emotional abuse) and Laurence Fournier Beaudry (who defends her ex-partner and boyfriend after he was banned from the sport due to sexual misconduct) won a very controversial gold medal over the American team of Madison Chock and Evan Bates.
After winning gold with Cizeron in Beijing, Papadakis felt his behavior left her no choice but to retire. When Papadakis lost her job as an NBC commentator following the publication of her memoir prior to the Milano Cortina Games, U.S. media finally gave attention to her story. The openly bisexual athlete did a high-profile interview with USA TODAY’s Christine Brennan, and gave her first English-language interview to Vogue. “The book is about a system, and if people frame it as my suffering, it completely undermines the system of responsibility,” Papadakis told Vogue.
Canadian biathlete Shilo Rousseau competed with a rainbow flag on the grip of her rifle. Back in December, the International Biathlon Union told Rousseau she had to cover the rainbow, as it violated the rules on political statement. “It didn’t seem like this is a political statement,” Biathlon Canada’s performance pathway director, Clayton Whitman, told Outsports. “It’s expression of Shilo’s identity, and it seemed like an overreach by the local officials.”
Rousseau was ultimately allowed to compete with the rainbow flag on her grip. “The visibility of the rainbow means a lot to me, and it is important that I can represent who I am authentically,” Rousseau told Outsports. “Being proud of who I am has not been an easy or quick journey, and I’m so proud of how far I have come.”
If you think the U.S. men’s hockey team has terrible vibes, it’s probably because the Tkachuk brothers are playing on the team. They’re fighting a lot of people despite the Olympics’s “no fighting” rule, but they’re also transphobes (or, at least, one of them definitely is). Matthew Tkachuk is on President Trump’s Fitness Council alongside NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and Wayne Gretzky. The council will, among other things, be focusing on “keeping men out of women’s sports.”
And finally, in not explicitly gay news but spiritually gay news, doubles luge captivated the nation this weekend. The sport achieved gender equality, with women’s doubles luge being featured at the Olympics for the first time. At Defector, Sabrina Imbler shares their (very gay) insights from watching the sport: “I watched most of the event in a fevered haze, punching ‘how to decide top vs bottom doubles luge’ into DuckDuckGo and ‘doubles luge’ into the fanfiction website Archive Of Our Own, or AO3.”
