Theydies and gentlethems, there are more LGBTQ+ competitors at these current Tokyo 2020 Olympics than all others combined, which is fkn huge. However, this statistic comes with a fun little fact that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.
Thanks to Outsports, which constantly tracks the total number of openly gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and nonbinary athletes competing in the Olympics, we now have some sparkling queer statistics to gawk at.
According to their calculations, there are at least 175 openly LGBTQ+ athletes at this year’s Olympics, which is staggeringly a higher number than all Olympics combined.
For reference, this number is more than triple that of the Rio games, which saw 56 publicly out competitors (which broke records at the time).
However, if we have a look at the long list of openly LGBTQ+ competitors, and which sports they play, we can see that a majority of them are from women’s soccer. In fact, there are roughly 42 openly LGBTQ+ competitors in women’s soccer, which makes up almost 25% of the total queer athletes.
What I’m saying here is, for the women in soccer, this year’s Olympics is basically just a convention for talented lesbians and bi people.
@chatherineh all i wanna know is which one will be my wife #olympics #soccer #uswnt #kristiemewis #meganrapinoe #wlw #lgtb #tokyoolympics #olympicspirit
Outsports reports that at least 27 different countries in this year’s Olympics have at least one LGBTQ+ athlete in the mix, with the USA coming out on top with over 30.
They may not win the most gold this year, but hey, they can have this one.
The country with the second most representation is Canada, with 17 athletes. Australia is sitting at sixth place with 12 athletes (most of them from Soccer) and New Zealand follows close behind with 10.
“Being able to compete with the best in the world as my most authentic self at the biggest international multi-sport games shows how far we’ve come on inclusion in sport,” Canadian swimmer Markus Thormeyer told Outsports.
“I’m hoping that by competing at these Games I can show the LGBTQ community that we do belong and we can achieve anything we put our minds to.”
This year, I’ll be rooting for the girls, the gays and the theys. Oh, and the Aussies of course, especially the queer ones.
