Even though covid19 is the reason why the Olympics and Paralympics have been postponed this is not the first time that a virus has created some concern during the games. Here are some of the health scares that have effected the games over the years.During the current pandemic there has been a renewed awareness of the previous world pandemic, the 1918 outbreak of flu. This was a year that the Olympics were planned to be held in Berlin but, obviously, the First World War led to its cancellation so there was no effect on the athletes.
Flu threatened several later Olympics. In Nagano at the winter games of 1998 a major outbreak occurred which effected 900,000 people, including the wife of the Japanese Prime Minister. A Norwegian speed skater, who won the gold medal in the 1500 meters, had to pull out of the 1000 meter final because he caught flu. Flu outbreaks affected several other Olympics – Vancouver 2010, Beijing 2008, and Salt lake City 2002.
An outbreak of norovirus occurred at the 2018 PyeongChang winter games which effected 261 people. Most of these cases were reported before the games began and it was mainly security personnel who were infected. The military was brought in to cover them, and the games organisers increased hygiene facilities. Nevertheless, on 16th February, halfway through the games, two Swiss slopestyle skiers became infected and were isolated. Like covid19, the most serious cases of norovirus can be fatal, but the majority of patients recover. The two skiers both recovered enough to continue competing in the slopestyle finals alongside gay skier Gus Kenworthy two days later.
At the preceding summer Olympics in Rio 2016 you may remember the fuss about the diving pool being an alarming shade of green. But the biggest health threat was the growing zika virus epidemic. Even before the games began several athletes decided not to go to Rio. Thankfully, the zika virus didn’t make an impact on the Rio Olympics, again due to increased hygiene procedures and mosquito repellents (zika is mosquito transmitted).
One virus which has had the biggest effect on the lgbt community and the Olympics is HIV. At the Olympics themselves there was a bit of concern, retrospectively, surrounding the preliminary round of the men’s springboard competition at the 1988 Seoul summer Olympics. This was the well-known incident in which Greg Louganis, who was not openly gay at the time, hit his head on the diving board and bled in the pool. He had also just been diagnosed HIV+ but he didn’t reveal this publicly until 1995. There was a lot of media speculation about contamination but there’s no evidence that any diver suffered any ill effect from diving into the same pool when competition resumed.
The sport of figure skating has been particularly hard hit by HIV and AIDS. The first Olympian to die from an AIDS-related condition was actually a track and field athlete, Tom Waddell, the founder of the Gay Games, in 1987. He was followed two years later by Olympic figure skating champion of 1972, Ondrej Nepela.
Returning to the present pandemic we are thankful that no lgbt Olympian has yet died from covid19 (several non-lgbt former Olympians, sadly, have). The media has brought to light some covid19-related news concerning some athletes. The above-mentioned Gus Kenworthy has been helping to look after his 9-month-old nephew and 4-year-old niece after they became ill. They were both treated in Denver Children’s Hospital.
Fellow 2018 US Winter Olympic team-mate, ice hockey champion Meghan Duggan returned to her former school as a substitute physical education teacher after the serving teacher contracted the virus.
On those notes let’s look forward with heightened hope and eager anticipation for the return of the Olympics in 2021.
As far as my lgbt Olympic research goes perhaps it is best that the Tokyo games have been postponed. I’m so close to having 400 athletes on my list. Ten have been added this year so far (number 391, an equestrian 3-day eventer, was added three days ago). Perhaps, if the games had not been postponed, there would have been enough athletes coming out as lgbt in Tokyo that the magic number of 400 would have been reached anyway.
The trend since Atlanta 1996 has been for new openly lgbt athletes to made their debut at the Olympics. There are 16 athletes who have already competed in their first Olympic qualifying tournaments or achieved the required points or scores to qualify and half of them could have been selected. An additional 19 have had their qualification events postponed until next year. I’m confident that a year from now there’ll be over 100 openly lgbt Olympians competing in Tokyo and over 400 on the all-time list.
On a related topic, At the moment I’m continuing to list lgbt Paralympians, though I am thinking about moving away from the Paralympics to concentrate on the Olympics. I’m sure there’s someone out there with the enthusiasm to carry on the work.
In the absence of a full lgbt Olympian list I’ve updated some of the statistics and facts and these are shown below.
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