I watched the rerun of the Opening Ceremonies PerpWalk (or PervWalk or CatWalk or whatever they called it) on the jumbo tron at one of the numerous outdoor cafe areas, and I immediately had the same reaction. It bore no resemblance to the very distinguished March of the the Athletes in the 7 GayGames I particpated in. It seemed to be an audition for Ru Paul's new show for showcasing drags. There were a few athletic teams mixed in, like the Malmo Swimmers, but they seemed out of place, like they were the vaudeville 'family act'. I just could not identify with it or feel proud about it. It seemed so dated and unnecessary, and I am sure I will catch flak for feeling this way, but it cheapened the Athletes using them as props. But I am old and dated and never understood drag, or why I must accept it as an identifying aspect of my culture.

Final World OutGames??

http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ch=new...3=&id=94244

Perhaps less visibility than in GG I have seen. But the accreditation center at Tivoli is marked, and various bridges have the WOG2009 logo on them. The many Outcities squares provide visibility, but the connection to a major sports festival doesn't seem so clear (it looks more like some summer festival thing).

When I was at airport on Friday, there was a prominent welcome desk. And at central station, a somewhat less prominent one.

Busses happened to work out well for us. You've got 26 (I think) from Nyhavn to the center, for example. Get one of the Danish versions of the transport map in any bus or metro station. They are fairly clear (and easier to read than the smaller tourist version you got in your welcome bag).

Did you get a wrestling info packet at accreditation? They seemed pretty well done (but expensive: color photocopies????).

I'm impressed that Xtra has a good amount of media coverage of the Outgames, particularly since it's being held outside of Canada.

First-person: World Outgames are 'an amazing experience': Catching up with Canadian athletes and activists in Copenhagen for the Outgames

Heading to the Outgames: Canadian women's hockey teams (video)

Go Canada!

I'm not sure if Outsports will be covering any of the human rights activities that are part of the Outgames, but I read this in the Guardian about a sort-of human library, where "you can borrow a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender person for a half-hour chat in the library's Astroturf reading area."

Apparently a volleyball team did not show up for their Gold Medal match at Outgames. Anybody know why??

I would assume it would have to do with the 'boycott' Outsports mentioned that had been threatened because of the way organizers were collapsing competitions and eliminating some of the matches players were expecting

Gene, have to disagree with you here. After getting my bearings (as in any new city), I found the city very easy to navigate, with a public transit system that beats any I've seen in the U.S. I was getting around to various venues quite easily. And I found dozens of people to help me with anything I asked, even to the point of helping me buy transit tickets (the instructions are all in Danish and were even confusing to the locals).

Apart of what I thought of the Games themselves, this is one of the best cities I have ever been to and I was thrilled to be back after a shorter visit 11 years ago. Denmark works.

Great coverage of the Outgames, Outsports! Alas, aside from the bomb scare, there doesn't seem to be much coverage of the events in other media.

Here's some additional coverage and photos:

Copenhagen Post: One of the city’s most prominent churches opened its doors to homosexuals on Thursday, offering to bless gay and lesbian couples from countries whose own churches typically chastise them...

Hunk du Jour : Jack Mackenroth's medal count: 2 Gold, 4 Silver, and 2 Bronze!

Maltesen's (?) Flickr photo stream: Outgames Copenhagen

Gay Cities coverage.

Video of opening ceremonies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8unIGXxn5ng

Video of opening ceremonies - parade of nations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qncuIeIv6jg

Video interview of Australian rower: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkA77Fq_rVA

Video of water polo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGT79O8QxjQ

Video of synchronized swimming, rowing and dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlqWFPktAc4

More synchronized swimming: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGt_ifTWgPg

Melbourne rockers The Blow Waves head to Copenhagen to perform.

From official Denmark website: Opening Ceremonies video, Flickr photo stream (Copenhagen Pride) and Outgames

Hey Jim... I finally got the hang of the pronunciation so I did not have to constantly write things down, and that solved a lot of my problems. I can speak/understand minimal German.. notice my avatar.

The METRO -is- also amazing for such a small city (now that I have been lost all over it)... so convenient, it is a bit overkill/overwhelming because the city is an older city not on a grid. Small city, very many criss-cross routes, and LONG hard to pronounce names that do not fit on the small maps. All frustrated me the first 2 days.... until I learned the 3 exact METRO lines I needed.

The default currency is still Krone, and taking Euros sometimes meant getting Krone coin change.. coins as big as the CopenHagen Medals which also looked like Krone. Between the Krone and Euros and the damn Pounds required to buy anything in Terminal#3 at HeathRow, I have a large bag full of very heavy coin. I think that is why they have these charity donation jars at currency exchange counters.

I travel Europe a lot, at least every 2 months... Tallinin, Brussels, Aachen, Budapest, Prague, Paris.. etc... for work.. so I am not unfamiliar with these traveling issues... I (unexpectedly) just needed to do more research on CopenHagen before I arrived instead of assuming it would be as easy as the very convenient plane/train Brussels-FrankFurt-Koeln-DussleDorf-Munich corridor I am used to, or just showing up cold in Tallinin! I make it a point to not take a Taxi anywhere just on principle! I flew back on LOT through Warsaw, and was impressed that the second default currency there was $USD!

CopenHagen is beautiful and has this nice sea breeze weather... I like this about all the Baltic/North Sea/Hanseatic cities.. outside summer restaurants all night & NO BUGS!

The sportscenter where they held Martial Arts, Wrestling, Badminton, Bowling, and a lot of other events was nice, reminded me of a smallish American University training field house... convenient, informal, comfortable, concessions, but very little if any spectator seating. It was on the par of the Amsterdam'98 university we used for GayGames 5, and is perfect for smallish events.

Hotels and restaurants were very nice but especially expensive. There were lots of cheaper small ethnic places for 'fast' food that were local family and not chains.

Bottom line though is that picking a 'nice tourism' city that appeals to the affluent is not a good idea for choosing a major event like this was 'supposed' to be. GLBT athetes run the demographic spectrum, and that should be of paramount importance. For all of the human rights talk, cruise ship references, and international chatter, this was still a -very- affluent white male event. Knowing the names/cities of athletes now for years of GayGames competitors from working on registration databases since Amsterdam'98, there is a very clear pattern. I will be very surprised to be proven wrong if they ever release true registration figures of who actually showed up. Copenhagen was very very expensive, prohibitively so for blue collar American athletes.

Did anybody participate in martial arts? Did they end up with enough registrants for a competition?

It was held at the same time and place as wrestling, in fact, next door.
My friend and Team San Francisco Board colleague Ken Craig of SF Triangle Martial Arts was in charge.
They had maybe 20 max show up..
I joked that we should have also wrestled the Martial Arts guys for more matches.
Triangle gets ~45 at just a regular local tournament like when they hold it with the wrestlers.
Ice Skating 16.

We need to get the LGBT Sports groups to start demanding an end to this OutGames scam.
It is messing up the critical mass opportunities of smaller sports with less affluent athletes.
Team San Francisco & TeamBerlin/Vorspiel's petition along this line are at: http://lgbtsportsfuture.wordpress.com/

Given that Team San Francisco is ~10% of any GayGames registration has got to be handwriting on the wall that OutGames will never penetrate the NorthAmerican market.
Given that Team Berlin/Vorspiel is probably the largest European city GayGamers registration, that has to be considered.

I know I sound evil and negative.
But I am not.
I gave CopenHagen the chance with sanctioning wrestling to at least prove a decent EuroGames registration over the objections of WWB leadership!
It was abysmal.
Registration Numbers do matter.

Could please someone who attended the session about the future of LGBT sports at the conference in Copenhagen update the Outsports readers about what was discussed there and about the outcomes of the session?
Thanks in advance.

Both Ken Craig and I were not going to pay an additional $280 to get into the conference.
All registered athletes would have had to buy that separate conference registration to attend.
Incredible hubris to exclude the very athletes the conference was about!
I gave the Team San Francisco and Wrestlers WithOut Borders white papers to Emy Ritt and Marc Naimark to present.
I only know the following after talking to various attendees afterwards.
There were GLISA and EGLSF people present as well as other team reps like Vorspiel Berlin.
The huge Team Berlin/Vospiel petition to go back to a single quadrennial was effective.
These docs are all available: http://lgbtsportsfuture.wordpress.com/ .
The only outcome I am sure of is that the 'next' hearing will be in Koeln this September during the FGG AM, and all parties present agreed to meet.
There were 'rumors/whispers' that EGLSF is finally seeing their Brand being co-opted by OutGames & GayGames.
But considering GayGames has not been in Europe since Amsterdam 1998, and OutGames is planning to be in Europe again this time in Antwerp 2013, it seems a moot point to argue which event needs to stop co-opting an existing one.

Re: martial arts. There were 17 martial artists in the event. News report.

Volleyball finals have still not been reported by Copenhagen, but I got a note from organizers who say they were held and will be posted.

I just posted an article on what I call medal inflation. Some might agree with me, and I know others won't, but would love for people to weigh in at the bottom of the article.

Windy City Times article: Outgames end to rave reviews

I think in this article Wessel Van Kampen is being disingenuous when he says "Last year, at the delegate congress in Vancouver, our membership told the board that we like the [application from] Antwerp, Belgium very much".

In fact, many delegates did NOT like Antwerp’s application for several reasons and there were talks to delay the choice of the host of WorldOutGames 3 of one year, to be able to look for other bids. But some people feared that by putting the process on hold, Antwerp would withdraw their bid too and GLISA would lose the only bidder they had.

I guess that the homophobic attacks in Copenhagen only make Antwerp’s choice more difficult for GLISA. Antwerp is one of the cities of Europe where the neo-nazi, nationalistic, racist, homophobic, far right wing is the strongest. Indeed, locally, they were the first political party, and they did not govern the city only because all other political parties reached an agreement to keep them out of power. From the opendemocracy.net website:

“A third of Antwerp’s voters have supported [the Flemish nationalist Vlaams Blok]’s brand of nationalism, which advocates an independent Flanders, the repatriation of foreigners, and authoritarian domestic security policies. The Blok’s slogan Eigen Volk Eerst (“Our People First”) conjures a unified, monocultural nation cohering around the image of a traditional family, one hostile to perceived threats: homosexuality, abortion, and of course immigration.”

On the other hand, seen from the Antwerp’s perspective, it must not be nice to be told in 2008 that you have been chosen to host the 3rd WorldOutgames (GLISA's press release of 25 oct 2008) only to hear GLISA’s co-president to say one year later that GLISA “has alternatives”, as if the selection process was still open.

Unfortunately, this lack of serious of GLISA in managing their own site selection process casts another black mark not only on themselves, but also on the credibility of the entire LGBT sports movement.

I am not at all surprised that xtra.ca covers the OutGames.

The OutGames are a Canadian project that M2006 transformed into a Canadian point of pride by not presenting fairly the true reasons (and some of their deliberate decisions) behind of the failure of the negotiations with the FGG.

The author of this article is another of those journalists who only perpetuate M2006’s party line that the Gay Games “were taken away from them” :
“The Outgames was born out of a dispute over hosting the Gay Games in Montreal, but rather than give in when the events were taken from them by the International Federation of Gay Games, Montreal rose to the occasion, forming a new organization and creating the Outgames. »

Luckily, there are individuals like Charlie Carson who will never let statements supporting this misconception go unchallenged, as he does in his excellent comment to that article, where he reminds that even Mark Tweksbury, on the same media xtra.ca in November 2003 admitted that « …Montreal took its ball and walked away. »

There are two sentences that I personally find more interesting in Ross Forman’s interview to the GLISA co-presidents.

The first is from Co-president Van Kampen : "I think one of the key learning points from the past is to have a very good, stable relationship on paper," Van Kampen said. "I have no problems taking a week or a month longer to do that because [ the contract ] is something that binds two organizations for a very long time in an extremely difficult project. If you don't lay a good foundation, it's going to bite you in the tail."

I believe this sounds very familiar and so similar to the learning process -- and eventually to the current position -- of the Federation of Gay Games and more and more distant from how originally GLISA was presented : an organization that leaves “more freedom” to the host and is happy with a “simple” contract, like Montréal 2006 wanted it.

“We are not a governing body”, kept saying Rachel Corbett while she was GLISA Executive Director.

The OutGames RFP, stating that other than having at least 10,000 participants there are no other requirements for the Outgames, is reminiscent of that, but it is totally inapplicable.

However, here we have another point that originally was presented as a difference between the two organizations and now becomes a resemblance between the two organizations… and one fewer point to justify the existence of both.

The other sentence is from Co-President Applegate : Applegate added that, if the Outgames and the Gay Games are ever merged, she'd be a strong proponent to maintain the Outgames' cultural program and human rights conference alongside the sports program.

If Julia intends this in the sense that GLISA would now require that the host of the quadrennial event has to produce, fully manage and be fully responsible, including financially, of a festival with those three components of equal scope, then it would be another step away from the “We are not a governing body” position.

In fact, I would consider that a very strong requirement on a host, and one I would not support to put on the host of a Gay Games. It would be repeating the same mistakes that have been identified as causes of the deficits by the organizers of Amsterdam and Sydney for instance.

As correctly noted in the article, the Gay Games have always had a significant cultural component. But also academic and human right events of several forms have always taken place in conjunction with the Gay Games, in some cases in partnership and with the supervision of the FGG and the Gay Games hosts.

I support instead the inclusion of a human right conference and possibly of additional cultural activities along the lines of the recommendations of “The Image of Gay Games” white paper passed by the FGG Board in 2003.

Chicago accomplished a lot with that approach, and that certainly contributed to limiting CGI’s intrinsic financial fragility, as any host organization of this kind of event.

The relevant parts of the paper dealing with conferences are copied below. There is also a specific session for Culture. If I remember well however, the polled participants of previous Gay Games showed to be satisfied with the extent of the cultural festival.

“CONFERENCES
Some hosts have previously proposed and added conferences to the Gay Games program. Conferences organized during past Gay Games have covered topics such as human rights, homosexuality in general, or homosexuality in relationship with various aspects of our society such as labor relations. These topics are important but are not a primary part of the Gay Games mission.

The Federation is not opposed to the inclusion of conferences. However, since they are not a core component of the Gay Games event, host organization resources cannot be allocated to organizing, promoting and delivering such events. Additionally, if a host decides to include conferences in the Gay Games program, the topics of these conferences must be related to the mission, image and vision of the FGG and Gay Games movement (e.g., homosexuality and sports/art, integration through sports/art, self esteem and empowerment through sports/art, etc.). The FGG must be a more visible part of any such events under the Gay Games brand and should retain approval rights over the topics of any conference associated with our event.

Over the past few years, there has been an increase in organizations whose mission is to promote academic conferences around or related to LGBT issues, some including sport (e.g., the U.S.-based Gay and Lesbian Athletics Foundation). It is the FGG’s position, therefore, that hosts should explore opportunities to partner with such organizations so that conferences are organized, promoted and produced by external groups with requisite expertise, independent of the host organization’s financial, staff, volunteer or other core event resources.”

One of the nicer and more unique stories I have heard from all the great feedback we have gotten from some of the athletes we made travel arrangements to Copenhagen's Outgames for - is this one.

The pitcher for the Toronto women's softball team is blind. Apparently she has a VERY tiny tunnel vision that allows her to see home plate and that is about it when standing on the mound. We had to jump through a few extra steps planning her travels as she was taking her guide dog and an assistant from the CNIB - Canadian National Institute for the Blind.

Well - we just received a brief email from her saying that the trip was fabulous, the arrangements we made for her, her guide dog and traveling assistant worked out perfectly - and best of all - her team won a bronze. A blind pitcher leads her team to the bronze. That's a sweet story.

Xtra.ca looks back again at the WOG2.

Gene, would you say that was "a hit" at the OutGames?

Are there others like me that find it a bit annoying when media put such an emphasis on the medal ranking by country? (“Canada placed fifth in the overall medal count” or “Germany won the medal count in the World Outgames wrestling ring by picking up two medals”). Xtra is not the only media making such reports, so the source of these data must be upstream.

While gold-silver-bronze are awarded at the Gay Games (but some people are talking to get rid of them altogether, see the heated discussion here), we never wanted to make this kind of ranking. I remember how both in Sydney and in Chicago, Kathleen and I had to educate media who asked us that question “How’s Australia doing?” or “Who’s first in the medal table?”. We did not even know and we did not care !

Some of our founders, starting with Tom Waddell, believed that tearing down barriers and “-isms”, such us “nationalism”, was part with the goals of the Gay Games of and some of us have continued to see it as an event that should discourage rather than encourage nationalistic feelings.

In my opinion, having cities in addition to countries recognized whenever possible at the Gay Games parade of the athletes also goes in the sense of diluting divisions represented by state frontiers.

Roberto Mantaci
FGG Co-President 2001-2006

Thanks Roberto.. I already answered Uffe on this very topic in the other thread.
First off, John Amaechi is an American basketball star, and has been a GayGames Ambassador for YEARS now, so why the big hype as if this was GLISA groundbreaking? Copenhagen asked John to make a great speech, but the content & format are hardly new, and have been done by GayGames already. Is this something GayGames needs to learn from GLISA?

Secondly, I just submitted my wrestling report on request of Ayoe Buhl of Copenhagen because I was there as WWB rep, one of the sanctioning bodies of the tournament. I was as positive as I could be. The average GayGames wrestling tournament is 100-160 competitors. WOGs1 Montreal 2006 had ~20, and WOGs2 CopenHagen had 7. This is not even a practice session, never mind an international tournament. While I have nothing but respect and admiration for the wrestlers to help CopenHagen save face, and do an unsafe Nordic Round Robin of 7 very mismatched (size/age/skill) wrestlers, I have to question the damage WOGs is doing to the critical mass of smaller sports. One Wrestler fractured his hand! WWB will be very hard pressed to ever sanction a WOGs again.

Gene Dermody Team San Francisco Board, Wrestlers WithOut Borders Treasurer, Federation of GayGames Honorary Life Member

It is annoying. It is also understandable.

The IOC does not release medal standings by country; the counts are tallied by countries and media. Then again, the IOC virtually invites the country counts by playing national anthems during medals ceremonies. It understands the pride people take in their nations and the value of having countries (who are looking for a return on their investment) support and send athletes to the Olympics even as it seeks to overcome the nationalism that fuels the events.

There is no parallel in LGBT sports, so typically the reporting of such tallies (which I have rarely seen) is by journalists who do not routinely or primarily cover sports and think they are actually reporting something important or relevant.

In this case, I think the reporting of medal standings actually detracts from the more important picture, which is the lack of participation and relative geographic diversity. Thus a report that said there were no Australian competitors in wrestling would be more informative than a report saying there were no Australian medalists.