GAY OLYMPIANS’ MEDAL TALLY TIED WITH MEXICO

If the openly gay athletes at the London Olympic Games were a country they’d have tied with Mexico when it comes to winning medals.

According to Cyd Zeigler, co-founder of Outsports.com, 10 out of the 23 openly LGBTI athletes competing in the Games took home medals and, as a collective, came in 31st place with a total of seven medals.

This is the same amount of medals won by countries such as Mexico and Iran and more medals than South Africa, India or Argentina won.

When it comes to gold medals alone, the four won by out athletes placed them in 21st place; tied with Iran, Jamaica, Czech Republic and Korea.

Unfortunately, South Africa’s only openly-gay competitor, Cape Town based archer Karen Hultzer, failed to take home any medals.

Zeigler noted that over 43% of the out athletes (10 of the 23) won a medal in the London Games, over double the percentage of athletes overall who won medals and that a whopping 58% of all openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender of intersex (LGBTI) Olympians over the years have won a medal.

“The argument that athletes can’t come out for fear of performance on a team is destroyed by the result of these Olympic Games,” wrote Zeigler.

While some may be inclined to include South Africa’s Caster Semenya in the LGBTI category, it must be stressed that her gender or sex identity is purely a matter of speculation and she has never identified as LGBTI.

The 2012 gay or lesbian Olympic medal winners were:

GOLD: Seimone Augustus – USA, Basketball.

GOLD: Carl Hester – Great Britain, Equestrian.

GOLD: Marilyn Agliotti, Carlien Dirkse van den Heuvel, Kim Lammers, Maartje Paumen – Netherlands, Field Hockey.

GOLD: Megan Rapinoe – USA, Soccer.

SILVER: Judith Arndt – Germany, Cycling.

BRONZE: Edward Gal – Netherlands, Equestrian.

BRONZE: Lisa Raymond – USA, Tennis.