Games over? A split between the Federation of Gay Games and the Montreal host committee leaves the 2006 Games in jeopardy and the ex-host city ready to go it alone.

Financial troubles have plagued the Gay Games for years, but never before have they led to the cancellation of an event. But now a falling-out over financial control between the Federation of Gay Games and the committee hosting the 2006 games in Montreal resulted in the federation's pulling the event from Montreal only 2 1/2 years before it was set to begin.

Immediately following the divorce--which came during a last-minute summit between the federation and the Montreal organizers in Chicago on November 9--Montreal vowed to press on with its own athletic event, Rendezvous 2006, which will coincide with the city's annual gay pride event.

The federation began looking at former bidders Atlanta, Chicago, and Los Angeles to see if those cities might be open to hosting a pared-down version of Gay Games VII in 2006. But no matter what happens, the split will be hard on the international gay sports community, said Kathleen Webster, cochair of the federation. "There are a lot of disappointed people around the world right, now," she said. "I think this is a sad and unfortunate situation the GLBT community finds itself in."

But Mark Tewksbury, Olympic gold medalist and cochair of Montreal 2006, sees the fallout as part of an inevitable evolution ill the growing world of gay sports. "I think people are going to have to be open to the idea of different sporting events in the GLBT community," Tewksbury said. "There are many events in the traditional sports world. Why not more in our community?"

Tewksbury admitted that his group, which was awarded the Games in 2001, walked away from the negotiations. "They were being unreasonable," he said of the federation, which wanted to limit the number of participants and control the event's budget. "This came after 15 hours of negotiating almost nonstop." But the federation countered that they were only looking for "robust budgetary oversight," something they say is reasonable, given the financial history of the Games.

Last year's Games in Sydney was almost shut down due to a serious budget crunch. The 1998 Games in Amsterdam had to be bailed out with more than $3 million from the city, and the 1994 Games in New York City suffered a serious financial shortfall.