The divers dove, the rowers rowed, and the tennis players traded searing ground strokes Sunday.
If the protesters hadn’t protested, the seventh Gay Games would have looked like any other athletic competition on its first full day.
There were barely any rainbow flags.
In ovenlike temperatures, hundreds of athletes across Chicago and the suburbs to compete in 14 events, including bowling on the North Side, swimming on the South Side and ice hockey in Lincolnwood.
In Crystal Lake, the scene of an emotional debate this year about whether the Gay Games should stage its one-day rowing competition in the conservative northwest suburb, a handful of protesters decried homosexuality. But they were vastly outnumbered by supporters.
Staged every four years, nearly 12,000 people, about 5 percent of whom are heterosexual, are registered at these Gay Games to compete in 30 sports. Although mostly American, athletes have traveled from 65 nations.
At events where men held hands with men and women with women, crowds ranged from a small smattering to several hundred, and competition was serious.
The competitive spirit was clear when gay British powerlifter Chris Morgan came roaring–literally–toward the weight bench as he prepared to lift nearly 259 pounds at Northwestern University’s McGaw Memorial Hall. With a silent crowd of about 100 watching, the 2002 Gay Games gold medal winner grunted as he pushed the weight into the air. But a violation led judges to call it a “no lift.”
It was a better day for Kathleen Rose Winter, 49, who lives in Andersonville. She hoisted herself from a wheelchair to the weight bench before lifting 66 pounds with shaking arms.
After a huge ovation, she said the Gay Games offered support she rarely encountered at another Olympic-style event, the Paralympics, which she called “mean-spirited, competitive and cliquish.”
“This is competitive, but not with a mean streak to it,” Winter said. “The athletes here are supportive of each other.”
Among the larger crowds to turn out was at Crystal Lake’s rowing competition, where Park District officials estimated an audience of 650. Spectators were joined by about a dozen protesters who stood in a designated demonstration zone a few blocks away and preached a message of “hate the sin, but love the sinner.”
Crystal Lake became a symbol of the controversy that can follow the Gay Games when the city’s Park District board voted in March against hosting the event by deadlocking with a 2-2 vote. A fifth board member later broke the tie in favor of hosting the event, but the storm never completely abated.
Even so, participants said the controversy had no effect on Sunday.
“I totally forgot about it until we got here and I saw the protesters,” said Cindy Poe, the only lesbian competing as part of the Mendota Rowing Club in Madison, Wis. “My attitude is, I’m going to do my thing and let them do theirs.”
