FEATURE Sports Complex The 'O' Word: Women's Rights, Gay Rights, and the Olympics Jim Provenzano | August 15, 2005 San Francisco women athletes march in a 1981 Gay Pride Parade to promote what was then called the Gay Olympic Games - Photo: courtesy GLBT Historical Society Only weeks before the first Gay Games were held in 1982, the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) sued to prevent the event from being called the Gay Olympic Games. Few may know the earlier history behind the controversy involving the Games' founder and Olympics officials. And a similar struggle with female athletes that took place more than 80 years ago mirrors those same attempts to use the term "Olympic." Like the games of ancient Greece, the modern Olympics, founded in 1896, initially forbade women from competing. The 1900 Paris Olympics allowed women in a small number of events, including golf and tennis. Frustrated by the limitations imposed on women, Alice Milliat, of France, organized the first "Women's Olympics" in 1922 in Paris. The one-day event drew large crowds. Four years later, women from 10 nations competed in Gothenburg, Sweden. Olympics founder Pierre de Coubertin, like many sports officials at the time (all of them men), saw athletics as more suited to men. Coubertin was quoted as saying that women competing in sports would nullify "the precious feminine elements" held dear to traditional perspectives. Meanwhile, in many other countries, women athletes excelled in diving and figure skating, particularly at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics. As the second Women's Olympics were planned in Sweden, pressure from the newly formed International Olympics Committee (IOC) forced the Women's Olympics to change its name – though not with a lawsuit – to the International Ladies Games. In 1928, the Amsterdam Olympics limited female participation to archery, golf, and tennis – sports considered appropriate for restrictive dress codes and limited to activities considered appropriate for women. But by then, many more serious female athletes, British women in particular, boycotted the 1928 Olympics, as they considered women's events too constricting. In 1936, women's track-and-field events were added to the Olympics, leading to a gradual inclusion of more women's events. Milliat's work for equality in athletics led to women's events in more Olympic sports. The struggle of women to use the term "Olympic" would differ from the IOC's response to gay and lesbian attempts to use the term decades later. By 1968, women played a much larger role in later Olympics competition, but no openly gay or lesbian athlete had competed. Tom Waddell became the sixth-place finisher in the decathlon at that year's Mexico City Olympics. His then-closeted homosexuality did not play into his public life at the time. Waddell expressed vocal support for track-and-field teammates Tommy Smith and John Carlos, the two African-American 200-meter medalists who achieved international fame (and scorn from Olympics officials) at the 1968 Olympics for raising their black-gloved fists during their medals ceremony as the U.S. national anthem played. Smith and Carlos were pulled from further competition and refused future Olympics opportunities. Waddell's arguments with F. Don Miller (then-executive director of the USOC) over his support for Smith and Carlos would play out 12 years later. In 1980, out in the media and an active member of the San Francisco gay sports community, Waddell wrote to Miller seeking permission to use the word "Olympic" in the planned 1982 multi-sport gay event he had begun to organize. Miller wrote back a letter refusing its use, saying that it would "dilute the meaning and significance" of the Olympics. Waddell went ahead with his plans anyway. Two weeks before the then-named "Gay Olympic Games" (also titled "Gay/Lesbian Olympic Games" in some promotional materials), Miller had USOC lawyers file an injunction prohibiting Waddell's use of the "O" word. Games organizers scrambled to delete the term from thousands of T-shirts, tickets, and posters, even soldering out the engraved word on medals. Also one of three sports columnists for the Bay Area Reporter at the time, Waddell – along with his editors – simply crossed out every use of the word "Olympic" from the layout boards before sending them to the printer. The first Gay Games survived, despite an estimated $30,000 loss of revenue. In 1996, a court decision approved demands from the USOC that Waddell pay $96,000 in legal expenses (the Games' organization, San Francisco Arts & Athletics, had no assets), and a lien was put on his house. That court order was later dropped, and Waddell died shortly after being relieved of the lien. Could part of the inspiration behind the Gay Games have been a personal antagonism between Waddell and Miller? Waddell is documented in his letters (some of which are in the collections of San Francisco's GLBT Historical Society) as having held a quiet grudge against the Olympics for years, partly because of the treatment of Smith and Carlos. And while some may see the continued growth and expansion of the Gay Games as having a separate but equal status from the Olympics, its impact on amateur athletics has become increasingly visible. In the 2000 Olympics, for example, David Pichler was among several out gay athletes who competed. The Athens 2004 Olympics had 11 out lesbian and gay athletes, several of whom won medals. The work of both Milliat and Waddell may be partially responsible for this progress. Jim Provenzano is the author of the novels PINS and Monkey Suits. 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