Gay sports calendar shifts.

This may be the only year we'll be torn between two international gay sporting events. Gay Games (to be held in Chicago July 15-22) and World Outgames (in Montreal July 26-August 5) will be held a year apart after 2006, with Gay Games VIII in Cologne, Germany (pictured), in 2010 and the secOnd Outgames in Copenhagen in 2009. Rachel Corbett, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian International Sport Association, says Outgames chose 2009 to "tap into the same sponsorship and broadcast dollars" as the multisport events that tend to crowd into even years, including the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games. She tells The Out Traveler that the choice was also "a move off the Gay Games calendar, in deference to them...I challenge the Gay Games to move to 2011, and then there is a perfectly integrated calendar that only serves and benefits the LGBT community worldwide." Roberto Mantaci, copresident of the International Federation of Gay Games, disagrees, saying that moving to 2011 would disrupt the smaller, regional games held in odd-numbered years (EuroGames, International Gay and Lesbian Aquatics, for instance), "As a sign of respect and as a sign of partnership with all organizations and sport clubs who have been part of the Gay Games movement for several years, the FGG would not consider changing the dates of the Gay Games," he says.