Gay athletes through history.

From the ancient Olympics to modern professional sports, gay men and lesbians have shown the world their athletic prowess

776 B.C.

* The first Olympic Games is held in Greece. The event, held every four years, is male-only; a separate competition, called the Heraea Games, ks held for women.

A.D. 393

* Roman emperor Theodosius the Great bans the Olympics and orders the buildings associated with it; destroyed.

1879

* Female baseball teams tour the United States, where outraged authorities often arrest the players for prostitution.

1887

* In what The Lesbian Almanac dubs "a great moment in lesbian and gay spoils history," the softball is invented in Chicago. The game becomes one of the few competitions considered socially acceptable for women. By the 1950s it; also becomes a popular pastime among lesbians looking for alternatives to bars. "The games did succeed in providing legends anti heroes for the lesbian subculture," Lillian Faderman later writes.

1896

* The first modern Olympics are held, in Athens. After lobbing, women are included in the next Olympics, in 1900.

1899

* Eight years after basketball is invented, separate rules are formulated for female? players.

1920

* Bill Tilden wins the men's singles at Wimbledon. Tilden, who does little to hide his homosexuality, wins two more Wimbledon titles and seven U.S. championships, in addition to leading U.S. teams to seven World Cup victories. In 1950 a survey of sportswriters names him the greatest tennis player of the half century. He dies in 1953.

1932

* Helen Hull Jacobs wins her first of nine Grand Slam titles in tennis. In a career marked by aggressive, dose-to-the.-net playing, Jacobs is ranked in the top ten players in the world for 12 consecutive years beginning in 1928. One of her contributions to the sport is to wear shorts, not skirts, on court. "It seemed like the sensible thing to do," she says later. During World War II Jacobs is one of only five Navy women to achieve rank of commander. She goes on to write 19 books, to farm, and to design sportswear. When she dies in 1997 at the age of 88, her obituary lists her long-time female companion, Virginia Gurnee, as her survivor.

1967

* The International Olympic Committee demands that all women athletes undergo chromosomal testing to determine their gender. The policy is instituted after officials begin to suspect that some Soviet bloc athletes are in fact men disguised as women with the help of female hormones.

1968

* Tom Waddell, a 30-year old Army physician, places sixth hi the Olympic decathlon. The "old man" of the U.S. team, Waddell is greatly respected by his fellow athletes. He continues his decathlon career until 1973, when an injury forces him to retire from athletic competition. Increasingly involved in gay politics, Waddell and his partner, Charles Deaton, are the first gay men to be featured in the "Couples" section of People magazine in 1976. Five years later Waddell forms San Francisco Arts an(t Athletics to plan the first "Gay Olympic Games."

1972

* Entertainer Dinah Shore lends her name to the Ladies Professional Golf Association tournament held in Palm Springs, Calif., each March. Twenty years later the event has become the single largest gathering of lesbians in the United States, attracting 25,000 women annually.

1973

* In a match billed as the "Battle of the Sexes," Wimbledon champion Billie Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs in straight sets at the Houston Astrodome. The New York Times reports that the calmest person al, the match was King's secretary, "a 25-year-old, pale, willowy blonde, a former hairdresser from Beverly Hills" named Marilyn Barnett. Eight years later Barnett sues King for palimony, asserting that the two had had a lesbian relationship for years. King at flint calls the claim "untrue" but later admits to the relationship,

1974

* The Front Runner by Patricia Nell Warren is published. A love story about Harlan Brown, a track coach, and Billy Sive, one of Brown's runners, the book eventually sells over 300.000 copies.

1975

* In a series about homosexuality in sports that runs in the Washington Star, former NFL running back David Kopay becomes the first professional athlete to come out.

* The first gay rodeo is held, in Reno, Nev.

* Mariah Burton Nelson plays for the Stanford University basketball team, where she is out to her teammates and accepted by them. After graduation she joints the San Francisco Pioneers, part of the ill-fated Women's Pro Basketball League, where she finds less sympathetic attitudes. Nelson is placed on waivers for appearing in a gay pride parade. Nelson goes on to write groundbreaking books about women in sports, including The Stronger Women Get; the More Men Love Football.

1976

* The first annual Gay Softball World Series is held.

1977

* Among the ten teams in the Women's National Football League is the Columbus Pacesetters, which Out in all Directions later notes was "owned and operated by a lesbian majority."

1978

* Ed Gallagher plays as an offensive lineman for the University of Pittsburgh's football team. Recruited by the New York Giants, Gallagher is released after just two weeks of training. Unable to reconcile his image of himself as an athlete with his gay urges, Gallagher becomes increasingly tormented. In 1985, 12 days after his first sexual encounter with another man, he jumps from a dam. Gallagher survives hut is left a paraplegic. He later says the incident. forced him to come to grips with his sexuality: "I was more emotionally paralyzed then, than I am physically now."

1979

* Glenn Burke is released from his contract as an outfielder with the Oakland A's, ending his career at the age of 26. Once compared to Willie Mays, Burke had previously played with the Los Angeles Dodgers, where he was credited with popularizing the high five. In a 1993 inter view in which he comes out, Burke says he believes he was traded front the Dodgers because management suspected he was gay, Beset by personal problems and a drug addiction, by early the 1990s Burke is living on streets in the Bay Area. He dies of AIDS complications in 1995.

1981

* In an interview in the New York Daily News, tennis champion Martina Navratilova publicly reveals that she is a lesbian.

* Sports Illustrated reports rumors that Pam Parsons, coach of the number 2 ranked University of South Carolina women's basketball team, is having an affair with Tina Buck, one of her players. Parsons resigns her position and the couple sue the magazine for libel. They lose and are subsequently convicted of perjuring themselves about their relationship. They am sentenced to four months in jail.

1982

* The first Gay Games competition is held, attracting 1,350 athletes to San Francisco. Torch bearers for the game are George Frenn, a member of the 1972 U.S. track team, and Susan McGrievey, a member of the 1956 U.S. swimming team. Founder Tom Waddell had originally called the games the "Gay Olympic Games," but the U.S. Olympic Committee sought a restraining order, claiming it owned the word Olympic. A month before Waddell dies from AIDS complications in 1987, the Supreme Court agrees with the committee in a 5-4 ruling.

1983

* Bob Paris wins both the Mr. America and Mr. Universe titles.

1984

* Bruce Hayes wins an Olympic gold medal in the 800-meter swimming freestyle relay, upsetting the West German team by just 0.04 seconds. At the 1990 Gay Games, Hayes comes out publicly and wins seven gold medals in competitions.

* Olympic track star Carl Lewis is dogged by rumors that he is gay, which he repeatedly denies. Still, the rumors take a toll on Lewis's ability to win lucrative endorsements after the Olympics is over.

1986

* Gay Games II is held in San Francisco. Some 3,500 athletes attend, competing in 17 sports.

1987

* Jerry Smith, a former NFL tight end, dies of AIDS complications without acknowledging that he is gay. Called "Billy Stiles" in Dave Kopay's autobiography, Smith was described by his teammate as his first love.

1990

* Gay Games III is held in Vancouver, Canada, the first lime the event is held outside the United States. By now it includes cultural affairs and covers 23 sports, with 7,500 athletes competing.

* Justin Fashanu, once one of the most talented soccer players in Britain, reveals in a newspaper interview that he is gay. Fashanu began his soccer career at the age of 17, By tile time he was traded by his team three years later in 1981, he was worth 1 million pounds, the first black player in Britain to attain that price. His career faltered soon afterward, however, and he began to play only occasionally in Britain and the United States. After coming out, he is described as behaving increasingly erratic; he makes the claim, which he eventually retracts, that he had had sex with two British cabinet ministers. Fashanu's life comes to an end in 1998, when he hangs himself in an abandoned garage in East London. At the time, he was being sought on charges in the United States for having sex with a boy.

1991

* Perut State University women's basketball coach Rene Portland states that she has a policy of forbidding lesbians from playing on her team.

1992

* Matthew Hall, a figure skater on the Canadian national team, comes out.

* In an appearance on The Phil Donahue Show, Roy Simmons, who played as a guard for the New York Giants and Washington Redskins in 1982 and 1983, reveals he is gay.

1993

* David Slattery, general manager of the Washington Redskins in the 1970s, comes out; as gay.

* Missy Glove begins her career as a mountain biker. In four years she rises to level of world champion. She informs potential sponsors from the start that she is a lesbian, a move that apparently has little effect on her ability to gain endorsements reportedly totaling seven figures annually.

1994

* Gay Games IV is held in New York City the week prior to the Stonewall 25 celebration. The event attracts mom than 11,000 participants in 31 events, making it the largest athletic competition in history. In a waiver of U.S. policy, Attorney General Janet Reno allows HIV-positive individuals from outside the United States to enter the country--without special permits--to attend the Games.

1995

* Greg Louganis publishes his autobiography, Breaking the Surface, in which he discusses being gay and HIV-positive.

* Ian Roberts, one of Australia's most popular rugby players, poses naked for a gay magazine. In the accompanying text Roberts speaks about being "part of a different group...an outsider." The 30-year-old--the first major sports figure in his country to come out--quickly becomes a fixture at a variety of gay events. Fans react positively, and instead of doing damage control, Roberts's managers find that he is much sought after for endorsements.

1996

* In the March 18 issue of Sports Illustrated, Muffin Spencer-Devlin, an 18-year veteran of the LPGA, speaks about being a lesbian.

* Rudy Galindo, the national men's skating champion, discusses being a gay man in the book Inside Edge: A Revealing Journey Into the Secret World of Figure Skating. Another professional skater, Doug Mattis, also comes out not long afterward

* Two openly gay U.S. divers, David Pithier and Patrick Jeffrey, compete in the Olympics.

1998

* Michael Muska, a former track and-field coach at Auburn and Northwestern universities, is named athletic director at Oberlin College. Muska is to be the first openly gay man to hold such a position in college sports.