The 2016 Olympic Games wrap up this weekend after a precedent-setting run for LGBT athletes. While the games made successful strides for LGBT visibility in sports, it wasn’t a development that came without pitfalls.
It’s estimated that up to 50 out athletes competed this month in Rio, a dramatic increase from the 23 LGBT athletes who were featured at the summer games in London four years ago. Granted, there were likely many more athletes who participated but who are not out; however, the sharp influx in the participation of competitors who openly identify as LGBT is a leap forward in the right direction. Just a few years ago, the American sports world was deemed one of the last bastions of institutionalized homophobia; the visibility of LGBT athletes competing on the international stage can continue to break down those barriers for generations of LGBT competitors to come.
LGBT involvement in sports was also welcomed by some corporate sponsors. Nike, for instance, featured a groundbreaking advertisement focused on triathlete Chris Mosier, its first-ever featuring a transgender athlete. The 30-second spot shows Mosier running and biking, with a narrator framing his story as the first transgender person on the U.S. men’s national team as one of fearlessness. Likewise, Mini offered its own series of ads celebrating the diversity of the U.S. competitors; though no out athletes were featured, the initiative highlighted the many identities of the U.S. team — poor, black, Muslim, immigrant — and encouraged viewers to defy labels.
LGBT relationships were also celebrated, as media swarmed Brazilian rugby player Isadora Cerullo when her girlfriend proposed on the field, and social media went wild for British racewalker Tom Bosworth’s proposal to his boyfriend, Harry, on the Rio beach.
Why, then, haven’t LGBT athletes been embraced on NBC’s televised coverage of the Olympics? Announcers missed chance after chance to treat the spouses and partners of LGBT competitors equal to how they treated those of straight athletes. One commenter even referred to the wife of a Brazillian volleyballer as her husband.
NBC Nightly News this week thankfully featured Cerullo’s engagement alongside that of a straight Olympian in a feature on love at the Olympics. But, that news nugget isn’t enough to suggest that the network has adequately, or accurately, addressed the LGBT inclusion at this year’s Olympic Games.
Here’s hoping that, in the next incarnation of the event, coverage will be as diverse as the competitors themselves.