At Rio Games, Seeking Out Heroes

Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid revolutionary and former South African President, once spoke in no uncertain terms of his love for sport, of his admiration for its transformative nature, of its ability to join even the most diametrically opposed cultural forces, if only for a short time.

“Sport has the power to change the world,” Mandela said once, his voice ringing out to a stadium of 65,000, moments from tearing one another apart. “It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand. Sport can create hope where once there was only despair.”

And while Mandela – the man whose contributions to not only his home country, but the world at large, were so vast, so far-reaching that we spent last Monday, as we will every July 18, celebrating his legacy – was speaking of the black-white racism threatening to rip asunder the 1995 Rugby World Cup, and in turn, Johannesburg, his words apply more broadly even, may be required now more than ever for an America – and a world – that finds itself asking why, oh god why, again and again and again.

For Charley Cullen Walters, an Olympic analyst and LGBT advocate preparing to wing his way to Rio for the 2016 Summer games, Mandela’s words represent a similar lesson of acceptance, of self and culture-wide growth, that he too preaches, that Walters hopes is refreshed in the minds of Olympic-loving fans, of the world, not just every two years, but every day, every morning when they brush their teeth, send their children to school, every evening at the close of day, when they shutter their home, those same children soundly asleep in the nearest room.

To Walters, who is many things – the son of a former professional baseball player and an openly gay man among them – the Olympics represent an ideal that he believes can change the world for the better, maybe forever.

“I think this is a time where, there’s a lot of confusion and complications going on in our world, and I think it’s a time that we need to use the example of the Olympics more than ever, as a kind of shining beacon of hope and a symbol for how great humanity can be and how we can live in peace,” Walters told The Outside Game.

But it’s a process, Walters knows, one that has been ongoing for decades, and one that will continue on through any number of further evolutions and permutations.

To Walters, the upcoming games in Rio can – if we let them – represent yet another step toward ensuring atrocities like the attacks in Orlando, Nice, and Munich, the murders of innocent black men, men like Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and the recent ambushes of police in Baton Rouge, cease.

“That’s what it always has been and I think that’s what it always will be,” Walters said of his view of the games as an example of our brightest and best. “I truly believe that the Olympic ideals will outshine the controversy.”

Walters, now set to attend his eighth games, remains in search of the “great heroes” of sport and, in turn, the change he still believes, like Mandela believed, they can bring about.

***

As the son of former Minnesota Twins pitcher-turned-St. Paul Pioneer Press sports columnist Charley Walters, the younger Walters was propelled toward sport as soon as age would allow.

“I can remember being six years old, and just being kind of glued to the games in ’84 when they were here in L.A,” Walters said.

When, in 2000, while traveling abroad in Sydney, an opportunity arose to not just attend, but work at that year’s games, Walters, drawn like a moth to the Olympic flame, leapt at the chance to see in person this spectacle that, to him, to the six-year-old Charley, brought out “the best in humanity.”

Ask Walters which games over the past decade and a half, stretched between Sydney and Sochi, were his favorite to attend, meant the most to him personally as well as professionally, and the answer you get will be, to most, a surprising one – Sochi.

Because while Walters, just like the handful of openly gay athletes attending those Russian games in 2014, expected to face hate and potential humiliation in a country not often associated with the ideals of openness or acceptance, upon arrival, he found an Olympic village conspicuously free of anger or judgment.

“Despite all the media hype, I arrived, felt very comfortable, very taken care of. Met some guy who took me to a bar my first night there, to an Olympic-themed drag show. You know, just little things.”

Looking back, Walters considers Sochi perhaps the greatest hurdle overcome for LGBT Olympic athletes to date.

***

In Rio, the expectation from Walters, as it is for most Olympic pundits, is that safety issues for LGBT athletes will be less prevalent, even less so than the problems-that-weren’t in Sochi, and even as the number of openly gay athletes – up from 12 at Beijing in 2007 to around 40 set to compete next month – continues to rise. Of course, issues like Zika persist, as do the general security issues thanks to the continued attacks across the globe . But for perhaps the first time, a sense of overt fear does not pervade the mind of the out Olympic athlete.

This year’s games will reflect that.

Brazil, much like the U.S., enjoys pockets of freedom, bastions wherein members of the gay community are welcome and able to thrive. Also like the U.S., the country legalized same-sex marriage in 2013, with same-sex couples enjoying many of the same rights as their cis counterparts. But, of course, not all is yet equal.

There will be a Pride House, the first time since Vancouver such a destination will exist for fans and competitors. And the increased acceptance of the athletes who choose to come out has, obviously, grown.

But there will be safety concerns, for all the athletes, especially in the current climate of terror – just this week, Brazil’s justice minister announced the arrest of 10 individuals who were allegedly preparing Islamic state-inspired attacks on the games – but especially so for the out athletes.

Despite seemingly ubiquitous images of peacocking men and women in drag, high-kicking it down Rio streets during Carnival, there remain concerns of violence and intolerance, on a day-to-day basis, let alone during a worldwide spectacle – something also shared with their North American brethren. And who knows what can come of the ultimate melting pot of athletes, some hailing from countries the world over, many with anachronistic views on the idea of same-sex relations, under the microscope of the international media?

The potential is there for disaster.

Walters though, sees strength where others see possible weakness.

“It seems like you turn on the TV every day and there’s an attack and, yeah, it’s a little bit nerve-wracking, but at the same time I think it’s all the more reason that we need to be brave and go and still let this continue.”

***

For years, policy lagged, both in the U.S. and abroad. Strides have been made, though the effects remain mostly cosmetic

Little by little though, change has been enacted. Ahead of Sochi, the U.S. Olympic Committee, America’s governing Olympic body, altered its bylaws, specifically its “Commitment to Integrity” section, to support the rights of LGBT athletes.

And when Gus Kenworthy, an American skier, came out as gay last year, the USOC turned the news into positive headlines, trumpeting Kenworthy’s announcement for all to see. Not a policy win, per se, but certainly a step.

Even the International Olympic Committee, the worldwide governing body of the games, has taken strides toward inclusivity. Following the 2014 Winter games, the IOC amended their anti-discrimination clause, known as Principle 6, to include sexual orientation. They also added a clause to their host city contract, aimed at ensuring future host cities abide closely to Principle 6.

Of course, many questioned the merit of the IOC’s anti-discrimination efforts. Outsports’ Cyd Ziegler dismissed them as “a bunch of fluff,” citing the actual choice of city as the more pertinent factor.

Walters though, at the very least, appreciates these changes for what they are – yet another step toward transformation.

“Obviously we’re headed in the right direction, even if it’s a slow-moving train,” Walters said.

***

The issue of LGBT acceptance – abroad and at home – is one obviously near and dear to Walters’ heart, as well as the hearts of those 40 or so openly gay athletes, names like USA basketball’s Brittney Griner, Dutch gymnast Jeffrey Wammes, and Brazil’s own Ian Matos, part of the diving team, who will be taking part in the Rio games.

But Walters, who has been privy to the thoughts and feelings, the inner workings of the minds of many of these gay athletes over the last 16 years, doesn’t think that sexuality, that LGBT rights will be chief amongst these competitors’ concerns once they’ve arrived in Olympic village.

“If you get to the mentality of an athlete, at the forefront of their mind leading up to the games and really their whole life for those who have been training, it’s really all about the sport.”

Something such as this differs on an athlete-to-athlete basis, of course, and there’s no knowing how one “out” Rio competitor will feel leading up to and during competition as compared to another.

But surely, this is the way they’d prefer that it be. The hope for all of them, as it is for Walters, surely remains that there will come a time when the media hype, the question of “do I come out before or after the games,” of “ will I suffer as other athletes, athletes like Michael Sam, suffered if I do make the monumental decision to announce to the world a fact which has no bearing whatsoever on my abilities as an athlete, my personality, in short, me as a person and an individual,” no longer need be asked.

As a journalist, covering the games for Bravo, moderating a New York Times panel focused on LGBT athletes broadcasting straight from Pride House, Walters is doing what he can to advance the cause.

“At least a handful of people need to be telling these stories because you know, otherwise if we don’t see them, if we don’t know them, if they’re not visible, then I don’t think this is ever going to change.”

Someday, Walters hopes, his efforts and the bravery of these out Olympic athletes will fundamentally alter the way they are all viewed, will change the way the world comes to understand and appreciate these men and women, himself – not as a sexual preference, a gender, but as a competitor, an athlete, a father or mother or sibling or friend, and maybe, even as a winner.