Who would be your gay athlete of the year?
This past year has been an amazing one for gay athletes. According to Truthdig.com, more than a hundred athletes (both amateur and professional) came out in 2014. It’s an astounding number, especially when you combine the number of athletes who came out the previous 10 years and the number doesn’t even come close. It’s an achievement that needs to be recognized.
Every December, Sports Illustrated picks a “sportsman of the year” and honors him (or her) with a cover photo and story in its end-of-the-year issue. Outsports.com believes that the “gay athlete” should be this year’s honoree.
“No one—and by that I mean no person or collection of people—affected sports in 2014 the way these LGBT people in sports dominated headlines and changed conversations from January to December,” writes editor Cyd Zeigler in an article Outsports.com.
“A year ago children were growing up in a world where you couldn’t be a gay umpire, NFL player or Major League Soccer champion. These brave men and women changed all of that in one defining year.”
Zeigler is right. The sports landscape has not only been transformed here in America but also throughout the entire sporting world, thanks to these amazing athletes.
All across the globe, athletes are discovering that they no longer have to hide from who they are in order to be successful. Curve doesn’t have the time to list every single athlete who came out in 2014, but we do have the opportunity to present our very own “Gay Athlete of the Year.”
There were many wonderful individuals to choose from, but in the end we decided that Brittney Griner is the 2014 Curve Magazine Gay Athlete of the Year!
Griner started off 2014 with a new Nike endorsement deal to model both men’s and women’s clothes. She created an anti-bullying app for LGBT youth; became engaged to fellow WNBA star, Glory Johnson; and has served as an advocate for the advancement of women and LGBT athletes in sports. As far as basketball is concerned, Griner set a league record for blocks in a single season, was named the WNBA Defensive Player of the Year, and helped the Phoenix Mercury win a WNBA Championship.
Let’s hope 2015 is another banner year for all of our wonderful gay athletes!