Brendan Holer on Beg Out as a Gay Cyclist | The Pro's Closet

Contents:

• GAY CYCLG LOVER
• THIS GAY TEENAGE CYCLIST IS ONE OF THE FIRST PRO MALE RIRS TO EVER E OUT
• GAY CYCLG GROUPS IN THE UK
• MOST CYCLISTS ARE GAY?
• GRAEME OBREE REVEALS HE IS GAY
• TAYLER WIL: I HOPE THE MEN'S PELOTON BE MORE ACCEPTG OF GAY RIRS
• BMX PRO COREY WALSH COM OUT AS ONE OF THE FIRST OPENLY GAY MALE CYCLISTS
• TOP 10 ATHLET WHO ARE RUMORED TO BE GAY

GAY CYCLG LOVER

"Estimat on the proportn of UK and US people who are gay or bisexual range om about three to seven per cent, as reported a recent Cyclg Weekly vtigatn to the absence of openly LGBTQ+ rirs the profsnal timat suggt there should be between five and 12 LGBTQ+ rirs currently ridg the Tour France. "The whole peloton, the whole cyclg fay, will have to face when somebody will feels fortable enough to clare [they are LGBTQ+], " Guarnieri says of how the more homophobic elements of the sport will have to tch up quickly when the first pro rir cis to e out. I mean people thk thgs like yeah, this job is too hard for a homosexual person.

” swagger (thk Dick Vale, not At Powers), all the trappgs of a tradnal cis whe male, or at least those of a ago, a time that now feels curly antiquated nsirg how far we’ve e — Holer was gay. After his parti wrapped, he’d feign fatigue, tell iends he was head to bed, then meet lol men onle and later that same night person (anywhere except for Rochter’s gay bars, which he avoid for fear that a straight iend might spot him). “I had a iend whom I told I was gay, and he was like, ‘You’re kiddg me, right?

You CANNOT be gay. Growg up durg the ‘80s and ‘90s suburban Rochter, Holer didn’t have any gay role mols.

THIS GAY TEENAGE CYCLIST IS ONE OF THE FIRST PRO MALE RIRS TO EVER E OUT

“I had no gay iends. My fay didn’t know any gay people. I had no accs to a real gay human, which sounds crazy to say…” he adms now.

’ So, to a kid the msage was, ‘Hey, if you’re gay and you have sex wh someone of the same sex, you’re gonna get AIDS and die. ’ There was no Michael Sam om the Rams beg like, ‘Yo, what’s up everyone, I’m gay and I’m cshg people on the football field.

"To a kid the msage was, ‘Hey, if you’re gay and you have sex wh someone of the same sex, you’re gonna get AIDS and die. A gay athlete like Sam, the first openly gay NFL player, was the type of role mol that Holer need.

GAY CYCLG GROUPS IN THE UK

By llege, partyg replaced those activi, but he tackled wh the same gto and palled around wh a crew of straight male iends typil of that ilk and era, one which a certa homophobic slur was so woven to the vernacular that Holer sometim heard g out of his own mouth.

MOST CYCLISTS ARE GAY?

Perhaps wantg to repture some of that magic of his first weekend as an openly gay man, he moved to Nashville, and not long after that, he met Chris Cooley, a silver-haired ntist 25 years his senr. Though tergeneratnal relatnships are mon  the gay muny, Holer wasn’t eager to expla to straight iends, and so he’d rigned himself to the ia of beg out while somehow remag hidn. Walle ti his iend’s talent as a ach to that of his g-out journey as a gay man.

It’s a photo he proudly shared on Instagram, along wh the hashtag #gaycyclist — somethg he clus wh nearly everythg he posts. “I have iends who make ments like, ‘Du, no one r that you’re gay. As a teenager and young adult, Holer never got the gay mentor he need, one who might have broken the mold for him by monstratg that there are untls ways which one n rve out a gay inty.

GRAEME OBREE REVEALS HE IS GAY

It’s a statistic that don’t add up, as Cyclg Weekly poted out, nsirg the percentage of the world’s populatn who are gay. This “nspicuo absence” suggts that a stigma of the gay male athlete persists. Here’s what one versn of that life looks like: Brendan Holer standg atop the podium as natnal champ, all his different selv alcg to his 6-foot-5 ame, skny, sg, arms raised triumph, a gay man lookg directly to the mera, unaaid to fully be himself.

Gay Cyclg Lover. gay lycra. Of the 978 rirs the men’s pro peloton, none are this statement is te on the surface – not a sgle male rir at WorldTour or ProTeam level publicly intifi as gay – ’s starkly implsible as soon as that surface is scratched.

TAYLER WIL: I HOPE THE MEN'S PELOTON BE MORE ACCEPTG OF GAY RIRS

Estimat on the proportn of UK and US people who are gay or bisexual range om about three to seven per cent.

BMX PRO COREY WALSH COM OUT AS ONE OF THE FIRST OPENLY GAY MALE CYCLISTS

If we take the low-end timate for men, three per cent, then you would expect there to be about 30 gay or bi rirs the pro peloton – enough for a whole WorldTour squad. The qutn, then, is not whether there are gay pros but why none of them feel ee to be open about who they really are.

TOP 10 ATHLET WHO ARE RUMORED TO BE GAY

As a gay man who has worked sports media sce the mid-Noughti, I n appreciate why a rir might feel pelled to keep their sexualy a secret. Even magaze offic – surely ls laddish than race paddocks – I’ve lost unt of the sually homophobic ments I’ve heard. Generally the have not been tentnal sults but rather thoughtls so-lled banter, “gay” ed as a pejorative term, and beg gay only ever mentned terms of speculatn or cheap humour.

Ryan (not his real name) is a gay rir who traed among top-flight pros and peted several UCI rac before droppg out of the sport a few years his mid-20s, he has agreed to speak to CW on ndn of anonymy.

“None of the rirs I traed wh would be explicly homophobic an abive way, ” Ryan tells me. ” He explas that securg ris on teams was “all about who you know” and spected the nnectns would be harr to foster as a gay rir, possibly to the triment of his reer. He hop his story will make rirs “more aware that how they act has an effect on others” and that gay rirs g through the ranks today will feel ee to be wholly themselv.

” Cyclg behd society The personal ttimony om Ryan chim wh rearch showg that most LGBTQ+ sportspeople have experienced homophobia; many end up feelg ostracised and suffer related mental health problems. “It was jt the gay jok, beg asked nstantly ‘Are you gay? “When to homophobic banter, needs to be taken more serly by erng bodi.

I didn’t want to prume this was te – part bee I uldn’t thk of any Brish exampl – so I arranged a ll wh US rir Tayler Wil (TrekSegaedo), who has been openly gay for almost her entire pro reer.

“I thk there are many reasons for that but personally I’ve never been on a team that hasn’t had at least one other gay rir – I didn’t have to thk twice about g out. ” Buttrsed by strength numbers, beg gay has never been a e for ncern eher among fellow rirs or wh team directors, explas the 31-year-old. The Catch-22 for the men is that fear and uncertaty around how an openly gay rir might be treated is staed by there beg none.

“I’ve asked a few male cyclists why they thk there are no openly gay men, ” she says, “and their rpons really surprised me. The guys I talked to were all between 20 and 26 and om untri that I thought were super-progrsive, but there was still some homophobic reactn.

“One guy said, ‘I don’t thk [a gay rir] would survive bee ’s such a hard sport’, ” Wil lghs at the illogily. The equatg of homosexualy wh femy and weakns for her betrays that “homophobia and misogyny go together” as a symptom of “men tryg to domate everythg. ” Other male rirs told her that they would be unfortable to have a gay teammate bee “you know, gettg changed together on the b and stuff.

” Rejectg such anxieti pot blank, Wil lls out the homophobic tenncy to “over-sexualise what means to be a gay man”.

As a gay woman who has never had to nceal that part of herself the sport, Wil regnis that mt be “credibly hard” for gay male pros, and urg men who feel secure their sexualy to “step up, speak out and make a more welg environment”. Reprentatn matters “I wasn’t yet openly gay when I first met Tayler [Wil], ” says former pro Molly Waver – speakg to me om Bristol on a break om her studi to bee a paramedic. She was there wh her wife Olivia [Dillon, former pro] – at a time when wasn’t so mon to see openly gay upl.

” The sheer visibily of other gay rirs had a profound effect on Weaver, she now reflects. He me out publicly January, and as someone petg UCI rac, he is as close as gets to beg that elive phenomenon, an openly gay male pro rir.

“I had already told my team-mat, fay and iends that I was gay [ November 2019], ” Laevens tells me over Zoom. “I replied openly, y, I’m gay, and then was all over the world.