How will openly gay athletes be received at Rio Olympics?

RIO DE JANEIRO — Gus Kenworthy was ready to tell the world he was gay. The freestyle skier had his coming-out story planned in his head before the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games.

He understood the gravity of the situation. Through weeks of soul-searching he had concluded the stage was perfect. Russia was attracting global attention for introducing legislation that purported to criminalize homosexual activity on the spurious grounds that it corrupted the minds of children. What better place to make a stand?

“Then,” Kenworthy tells USA TODAY Sports. “I ended up not doing it.”

Kenworthy captured the hearts of the Olympic television audience in Sochi, winning a silver medal and then adopting a pair of adorable stray dogs.

After returning home, he soon became the first action sports star to come out as gay.

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"For me, coming out after the Olympics was right,” he says. “The Olympics are overwhelming as an athlete. You work so hard for four years, heck, your entire life even, to get to that point. That commands all your focus.”

The rationale is understandable. Why come out and risk creating a distraction? It's a question athletes could be pondering now as they prepare for the Rio Olympic Games, which begin with the Opening Ceremony on Aug. 5.

“There might be 500 or so gay athletes competing in Rio, but almost all of them are closeted,” says Outsports co-founder Jim Buzinski. “The biggest lie is that it’s not important to come out.”

Buzinski estimates there will be more than 30 out Olympians competing next month. According to Outsports, there were 23 out athletes at the 2012 London Games from more than 10,000 Olympians, and 12 of 10,708 at the 2008 Beijing Games. Buzinski says the pro-LGBT movement has stalled over the past couple of years. Rio provides an opportunity to regain that momentum, he says.

"There hasn’t been a headline-grabbing athlete to come out,” Buzinski says. “That’s why the Olympics are so unique. It’s three weeks where someone from a non-major sport can take center stage. Gus (Kenworthy) … had star power. But he froze. His reason for waiting made sense personally, but he missed a big opportunity.”

Worse than Sochi

In the build-up to Sochi, LGBT issues were a hot topic of discussion, with Russia’s legislation sparking international outrage. President Obama made a statement by including openly gay former athletes in the United States delegation for the Closing Ceremony.

Yet the conversation has been significantly muted as Rio approaches, primarily because the concern in Brazil is much more complicated. The country has an image as a tolerant, open society and the world’s biggest gay pride parade takes place annually in Sao Paulo. Yet the New York Times recently tabbed the country “the world’s deadliest” place for the LGBT community, citing an average of one LGBT person killed per day, according to Grupo Gay da Bahia, a long-time advocacy group for LGBT rights in Brazil.

“It is hard to be LGBT in Brazil because the threat is constant,” says Dayana Gusmao, an executive for Rio Sem Homofobia (Rio Without Homophobia). “We have had so many cases of fathers beating their gay children to (try to) make them straight. We still have people who want to correct lesbians by raping them. Brazil is not a safe place to be LGBT.”

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The Brazilian constitution orders equal treatment for all, regardless of sexuality, but those intentions often fail to translate into reality.

For the LGBT community, the sports world is in a concerning cycle where major events have been awarded to nations with a troubling track record on gay rights. Following Sochi, Russia will also host the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Soccer’s biggest event will go to Qatar, a nation where homosexuality is outlawed, in 2022. In the U.S., the 2017 NBA All-Star Game was moved due to North Carolina’s discriminatory House Bill 2.

Just how deeply the Olympic movement should involve itself in such matters is a point of contention. The IOC has struggled to attract elite bids from countries other than those that resemble modern dictatorships.

“If Brazil is the home of the largest percentage of (LGBT) hate crimes, and we have LGBT athletes competing, then this is an Olympic issue. It’s that simple,” says Athlete Ally executive director Hudson Taylor.

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As Brazil fights against outdated stereotypes, there is also a steeliness in the resolve of out athletes who accept that the battle for acceptance is not yet won.

The fear that exposure of an athlete’s sexual orientation will supersede a performance becomes intensified at the Olympic level, according to You Can Play executive director Wade Davis, who helps coach closeted athletes on their coming out processes. Davis says visibility is the difference-maker to quell discrimination in locker rooms and in society.

“We’re not talking about just a (skin color) minority here,” he says. “It’s a hidden minority. You have to be out for people to really see you.”

“The more athletes that come out, the better things will get,” adds Mexico women’s soccer player Bianca Sierra, who recently received a homophobic backlash on Twitter after sharing a picture with her girlfriend. “If we as professional athletes are comfortable with who we are, we can inspire others who look up to us to be who they are.”

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Fear of losing sponsors is a major reason many athletes choose not to come out, but Buzinski says it’s “an argument that keeps getting thinner and thinner.”

“If Nike or Adidas dropped a gay athlete, can you imagine the backlash? If anything, being gay would increase your marketability,” Buzinski says.

Greg Louganis won Olympic gold medals for the U.S. in 1984 and 1988 and came out in 1994. He recalls a much different era.

"There were moral clauses where a part of your personal life could be used as a reason to cut sponsorship,” says Louganis, who was pictured on a Wheaties box this May in response to an online petition.

Louganis says he believes there was “subtle homophobia” from NBC during the 2008 Beijing Games. The network apologized for its coverage of openly gay diver Matthew Mitcham, who won gold in the 10-meter platform and raced into the stands to embrace his partner, at which point NBC’s cameras cut away.

“(NBC) showed stories about everyone else’s families,” Louganis says. “But just eight years ago, a major network was uncomfortable with a gay couple.”

Louganis, a gay rights activist, was involved in the “Open Games” – athletics events organized by LGBT rights groups that coincided with Sochi. A bomb threat halted the opening ceremony. “Visibility comes at a cost,” Louganis says.

While athletes are focused on their dreams of success and their personal challenges, the LGBT community in Rio continues to push for change. A series of protests is planned during the Games, much like during the World Cup.

In true Brazilian style, LGBT protests in Rio look more like parties, such as one attended by USA TODAY Sports this year. Many wore bandages and carried crutches in protest of police violence against LGBT revelers during the Carnaval in February, while samba music, dance and performance art provided a dazzling backdrop.

“The police just do whatever they need to do to shut us up,” protester Tiago Goncalves, 29, said. “They do whatever they want. We need progress.”

Progress is a vital concept in the LGBT movement, with many athletes wrestling between serving the public good and avoiding distractions.

U.S. gymnast Josh Dixon, who did not make the team this year for Rio or four years ago for London, believes an Olympian’s athletic and personal identities are intertwined and called coming out as gay four years ago a “responsibility for the next generation.”

British racewalker Tom Bosworth, who is well positioned for a medal at Rio, says timing was essential in his coming-out process.

“I had everything in place,” Bosworth says. “I was comfortably out, I was with my partner for five years, all of my friends and family knew. And I never hid it from my teammates. This all made it really easy to go public.”

Those luxuries were the exact obstacles that stood in the way for Kenworthy before the Sochi Games.

“I just wasn’t ready. It was too much all at once. I hadn’t told my family or my best friend so it was so much more daunting to come out to the world,” says Kenworthy. “I think it’s super scary coming out of the closet for anyone whether you’re in a small town, have a religious family or you’re involved in a sport with homophobic language.

“ ‘Responsibility’ is too intense of a word for coming out as an Olympian. You want to do it to help people, sure. But it’s gotta be for you first. And coming out has been the best decision of my life.”

Rogers reported from Rio De Janeiro.