Outgames headed to Vancouver? | News

[mr.x]

Outgames headed to Vancouver?

Andy Ivens, The Province
Published: Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Vancouver will be quite gay in the summer of 2011 if civic leaders stumping for the North America Continental Outgames and Human Rights Conference have their way.

Some 3,500 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered athletes and up to 2,500 delegates to the conference could attend, Vancouver Pride Society president John Boychuk said yesterday.

The 10 days of events "would come to a conclusion the week before Pride Week," which is in August, said Boychuk. "It would put the city in a long, gay spell. We did have the Gay Games here in the '90s. Since then, the gay and lesbian sporting world has made leaps and bounds."

Boychuk said a wide variety of sports were being considered for the Outgames.

He expects Vancouver to mount a winning bid, which must be submitted by August 2008. The host city will be decided in 2009.

"We have a beautiful city [with] a compact gay and lesbian community," he said.

"You get into the West End and it has a great feeling of community, and you can go out to Commercial Drive and get a feeling that there's a gay and lesbian community. You see people walking down the street hand-in-hand, where you don't necessarily see that in other large cities.

"Apparently, we're the first [city] to be considered for 2011."

He said teams in the athletic competitions would represent various cities around North America.

The human-rights conference would draw delegations from around the world.

aivens@png.canwest.com


© The Vancouver Province 2007

[Rumors]

Are those the same games that were in Montreal last year. :) ^^

[raggedy13]

^I think you're right.

"It would put the city in a long, gay spell."

:lol:

I imagine that being quite the different experience in comparison to the Olympics a year earlier.

[spongeg]

are these different to the gay games?

vancouver hosted the gay games in 1990

[mr.x]

are these different to the gay games?

vancouver hosted the gay games in 1990

completely different. there are the Gay Games and then there are the Outgames....i'm not sure why they need two, it would be better to pool in their resources for just one.

[isaidso]

There was a split because of infighting between the Gay Games and the Montreal organizing committee who had been awarded the 2006 Gay Games. They couldn't resolve their differences, so the Gay Games were yanked from Montreal and given to Chicago. Montreal organized their own games called the Outgames.

I competed in Montreal and there was a lot of discussion regarding the split. I talked to some Dutch swimmers in Montreal who had also competed at the Gay Games a few months earlier in Chicago. They said that participation at the Gay Games in Chicago was heavily American, while everyone showed up in Montreal. Athletes wanted to go to Montreal and were not happy about the switch.

The Gay Games has left a bad taste in the mouths of people outside the USA. The US centred Gay Games were accused of being too self-serving and too American. Many people left the opening ceremonies a third the way through because of politically fuelled speech after speech about 9-11, literally over an hour of it. It turned into a giant US pep rally.

What everyone agreed with was we all felt hijacked because of the petty egos and power mongering by those put in charge of running gay sport.

[spongeg]

ah crazy

[mr.x]

sounds like a catfight.

[Taller, Better]

Total catfight, and the Outgames lost a s***load of money. I thought they had bitten the dust.

Egos sank the event, in my humble opinion, and made two mediocre games where there could easily have been one. Isaidso, I think you will find there are two schools of thought on the matter, and the other school will blame the Montreal committee for forcing a split. My b/f participated in both and found the competition and crowds at Chicago were much stronger.

What is the connection between the Outgames and the Human Rights Conference? What is the Human Rights Conference?

[raggedy13]

Wow, who'd have thought there could be so much controversy within what I would otherwise consider quite a cohesive social group? I know gays are supposed to be drama-queens but this is ridiculous. I kid. :)

Does anybody know much more about this? Like are the two 'factions' just going to continue going their separate ways now, meanwhile ultimately detracting from their mutual goals by spreading thinner their resources/message/impact? So if the Outgames are coming to Vancouver, where are the next Gay Games going to be?

Oh well, I'm sure the Outgames will do fairly well here. They'll be riding the wave of (hopefully) success generated by the Olympics so that will probably mean an increased interest by international participants after recent exposure to the city as well as what will likely be the beginnings of a stronger local tourism industry. And if the Olympics prove to be a success, perhaps locals will be all the more enthusiastic about supporting these games as well in terms of both participation and attendance.

[Taller, Better]

Well.. if they win the bid I can only hope they will learn a few lessons from the Montreal Games, and keep the scale and affordability of them within reason. The best thing they can do is be realistic about the number of tickets they can sell to the general public for a somewhat "specialized group" event such as this.

[mr.x]

lol, this is ancient history but the World Cup was born when FIFA and the International Olympic Committee had a fight about some sort of rules in the football/soccer events in the Olympics....

[Taller, Better]

Fortunately there are enough paying fans out there to handle both football cups.... I am afraid that having two gay-type games might be stretching things a bit thinly, however....

On a side note, I fully expected to hate Blades of Glory, but wound up loving it!

[Franky]

An event like this means much more to me than the damn Olympics.

[northwest2k]

NooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooOOOOo

[nova9]

Why the 'no' northwest2k? Is there something dreadful about the outgames coming to vancouver?

[northwest2k]

Why the 'no' northwest2k? Is there something dreadful about the outgames coming to vancouver?

Of course not. What gave you that idea? :)

[mr.x]

i smell a homophobe.

[nova9]

(thinks to self: i wish we can ban people for stupidity)

while this will be a great opportunity to tap into the LGBT market, how can the average citizen benefit besides tourism dollars? would there even be any develpoment or constructing spinning off this event? i only ask to be curious.

[spongeg]

Wow, who'd have thought there could be so much controversy within what I would otherwise consider quite a cohesive social group? I know gays are supposed to be drama-queens but this is ridiculous. I kid. :)

Does anybody know much more about this? Like are the two 'factions' just going to continue going their separate ways now, meanwhile ultimately detracting from their mutual goals by spreading thinner their resources/message/impact? So if the Outgames are coming to Vancouver, where are the next Gay Games going to be?

Oh well, I'm sure the Outgames will do fairly well here. They'll be riding the wave of (hopefully) success generated by the Olympics so that will probably mean an increased interest by international participants after recent exposure to the city as well as what will likely be the beginnings of a stronger local tourism industry. And if the Olympics prove to be a success, perhaps locals will be all the more enthusiastic about supporting these games as well in terms of both participation and attendance.

i think the gay world is even more divided than the straight world - its also pretty blatant and odd considering they can and do treat each other worse than they were/are treated growing up in the straight world

just look at gay profiles in chat rooms - some just blantanly put - no asians, no fatties, no fems, etc etc

[spongeg]

(thinks to self: i wish we can ban people for stupidity)

while this will be a great opportunity to tap into the LGBT market, how can the average citizen benefit besides tourism dollars? would there even be any develpoment or constructing spinning off this event? i only ask to be curious.

no they use existing facilities and smaller venues