After the announcement of Billie Jean King’s role in the 2014 Sochi Olympics by President Obama, Florida Agenda publisher Bobby Blair had some opinions of his own. After all, he is an openly gay athlete with experience performing in the former Soviet Union, having represented the USA in the first ever Goodwill Games of 1986 in the sport of tennis.
Blair, writer Barry Buss and the rest of the Hiding Inside The Baseline team have some pretty strong opinions about what may transpire at the 2014 Sochi Games. In light of the recent events, Blair has released a brand new passage from his upcoming book due out in February of next year, which chronicles his views about Sochi and the events that will soon unfold. – Editor
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From Hiding Inside The Baseline…
Upon leaving the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy after several weeks of great practice with Andre Agassi, Ricky Brown, and others, I was prepared to join my team mates on a long flight to the former USSR. The Goodwill Games were a big deal back in 1986. Coming on the heels of the US boycott of the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow and the USSR’s boycott of the 1984 Summer games in Los Angeles, the Goodwill games were the brain child of Ted Turner (of CNN fame). They were designed to do nothing more than their namesakes stated; to re-establish some semblance of good will between the two Cold War nations.
As Americans heading to Russia, we were under strict rules to keep our out of competition behavior in check, assimilating with the native Russian people as little as possible. The importance of these Games was well beyond the athletic competition; what mattered here most was that no Americans were to be involved in an embarrassing international incident: I got the message. All that exploring I would do when traveling for my tennis – there would be no cruising the gay parts of town on this trip.
The tennis was being played in Yelma, a village off the Black Sea. The weather was awful; cold, wet and dreary, making the whole country just seem drab. All of the architeture looked the same, like some military barracks housing project. There was minimal TV and radio – not that I could understand a word of it anyway. The famed state newspapers and magazines were also in Russian, making reading about the local news impossible.
Before we left to come here, I had read up on the living conditions of the average Russian my age and was struck by the level of fear and control they lived under. The stark lack of human and civil rights available to the average Russian citizen sounded disturbing in the books I had read, but to see it first hand was different. If it wasn’t against the law to express yourself, everyone sure walked around like it was. My understanding was the consequences for acting out against the party line were serious, with possible jail terms. That specter hanging over everyone’s head resulted in an atmosphere of paralyzing fear emanating from the Russian citizens, a fear I oddly connected with. It wasn’t ok to express yourself or be yourself, and to do so had serious consequences, and they all lived within a self imposed prison, out of fear of being discovered. And though I may have been living in a different type of self imposed prison, I connected with them.
Political tensions between the two countries were quite high when we arrived. We were under strict instructions to be on our best behavior. There was to be no protesting of any kind permitted. To violate that creed would result in an immediate one way ticket home. On the flight over, I read about past political protests at the Olympic Games. I was enthralled by the story of John Carlos and Tommie Smith at the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City. Racial tensions in the United States were reaching a critical mass that summer. Smith and Carlos both medaled in the 400 relay for the USA and during the medal ceremony and the playing of our national anthem, they raised their black gloved fists in the air in solidarity for civil rights movement taking place back in the US.
The two of them were on the next flights out of Mexico City but they are a permanent part of Olympic history – prime examples of the power of political expression in the domain of sports. The long flight had me envisioning all kinds of different scenarios for my young self once afoot in the USSR. I certainly was not ready to take a stand like Carlos and Smith did and make some type of statement regarding the state of human and civil rights discrimination that gays the world round faced. But taking inventory of where I was as a person compared to what I had just experienced being around the free spirited Agassi and reading about the courageous Smith and Carlos and seeing the effects the overt oppression of a nation upon its citizenry had and I knew something within me had to change. I was tiring of being how I was. Of living a lie. It was the worst kind of lie, for I could not to my own self be true. How much longer was I going to keep living in fear of people finding out this was just the way God made me?
Addendum: What if I had come out then at the 1986 Goodwill Games? What would my life had been like? Oh it would have been an international incident alright. The world was just so not ready for a gay male athlete representing the USA to take a stand against the discrimination and bigotry gays faced in all facets of life. Neither was I ready to be that person to carry the torch for my similarly affected brethren.
It would have likely been the end of my tennis career; my need for outside financial support to keep playing would have dried up in an instant. It would have been a media circus no doubt, with the main stream media and sports world nowhere near as enlightened as they are today. Plus, there is little doubt the general public would know my name. I would have been a civil rights pioneer. A trailblazer, hopefully not a martyr in the mold of Harvey Milk or Mathew Shepherd.
I think back now on all my years spent in the closet with remorse, as a waste, not just for my own self-realization, but for the countless nameless and faceless gay athletes who came after me who chose to perform also in the closet just like I felt I had to for fear of losing everything. It’s a different time and place now for up and coming international competitors. The Winter Olympic Games are returning to Russia early in 2014. Much is being said and written about the host country’s recent crackdown on free speech as it pertains to the visiting athletes and their views about gay rights. Even in 2014, still much of the world is just not ready to face and address their irrational fears regarding what it means to have gay people amongst them in our overwhelmingly straight world.
But today, it’s a different era. It’s 2014 and with the internet as it is, the world is connected like never before. Gay kids like I once was have all kinds of sites and resources available to them online for guidance and support. The days of feeling painfully alone with a shameful secret are gradually fading away. I predict with near certainty that the officials in Russia are in for a rude awakening these Winter Games. I predict that athletes, likely groups of athletes, likely groups of gay and straight athletes, joining together in solidarity, will protest Russia’s restrictions on freedom of expression regarding gay rights. I predict the protests will be done tastefully and with a forceful purpose behind them, declaring that the days of discriminating against a group of people based on their God-given sexual orientation must end. I predict it will be a circus again, but a different kind of one as athletes from across the globe band together in unity to end the policies of bigotry that still plague our world today.
I predict that nobody will be sent home on the next plane, and that the media will celebrate these brave men and women, and it will be a powerful statement to the world that the time has come to put an end to this unfortunate chapter in human history. These athletes will be celebrated, not demonized, and I will watch these events unfold from the comfort of my home, wishing that could have been me in 1986. Wishing that I could be amongst them now to show my support, but knowing in my heart that what I will be watching is going to make the sporting world a better and safer place for all the gay athletes the future may bring.
