The Winter Olympic Games in Milano-Cortina start in one month, and Great Britain is one of the favourite teams in curling, after they won the World Men's Curling Championship title in 2023 and silver at the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022. One of their players, Bruce Mouat, spoke to Reuters about the power of sports to find supportive communities to LGBTQ+ people.
"Sharing my journey on social media platforms and showing that I have a loving partner who's extremely supportive of me, to be able to go and compete and win world championships and for him to be there and for us to embrace. Just to put that on a bit of a different platform is hopefully going to motivate other people in the community.
"It doesn't have to be elite sport, they can just get into sport. I just want to prove that it's a safe space for people", Mouat said.
The 31-year-old British player came out when he was 18 because he "wanted to be open about who I was, I didn't want to be asked questions in interviews and have to lie. I wanted to be authentically myself and it really was a freeing moment". Since then, he said that he played better, being able to be himself, and with "amazingly supportive" teammates.
According to LGBTQ+ website Outsports, there were at least 36 publicly out athletes competed in the 2022 Winter Olympics, including 11 men. However, there were none openly gay male athletes at the Winter Olympics in Sochi eight years later, due to Russia restricting the promotion of "non-traditional sexual relations".