When swimmer Bruce Hayes won a gold medal at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, there were few, if any, openly gay and lesbian competitors among the ranks of world-class athletes.
While a student at the University of California, Los Angeles on a swimming scholarship, he won three national titles in freestyle swimming events and helped win the NCAA championships in 1982. He also won three gold medals at the 1983 Pan American Games, and set a world record on the men's 4 X 200 meter freestyle relay at the 1984 Olympics.
Hayes first came out to the world in 1990 while competing in Gay Games III in Vancouver and has since competed and helped organize Gay Games events. "When you're famous and you come out, all of a sudden, the gay community wants to embrace you," Hayes said. "You become a role model, and I felt there was a lot I could do on behalf of the Games. The media would listen to me because I have the credibility of being an Olympic gold-medal winner, the kind of leeway to say the Gay Games are serious competition."
He has since gone on to win seven gold medals at Gay Games III and nine gold medals at Gay Games IV. Hayes has also set four master's level swimming records in the men's 30-to-34 age group. "The stereotype has been that lesbians and gays weren't athletic. The good thing about sports is that it's a really good arena to dispel those stereotypes. It's just opened up a whole chapter of what the real story is with gays and sports."
