Telling his story as important as winning medals

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/03/2021 (1648 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You’d think winning an Olympic gold medal would be considered the highlight of any athlete’s career, but for figure skater Eric Radford, it has some competition.

“One of the most satisfying and gratifying things that I’ve experienced through my entire career is seeing how telling my story has made a difference to other people and especially to people that I haven’t even met,” said Radford, a 2018 Olympic gold medal winner in the team event. 

“Of course, standing on top of the podium, it will be a highlight of my life forever, but getting emails and messages after from people I’ve never met before from all around the world telling me that me being open and me being true to myself has made it easier for them to be themselves, I think that’s up there with standing on the podium as one of the best feelings I’ve experienced.”

Radford, who was born in Winnipeg, grew up in Red Lake, Ont., and now lives in Montreal, better prepare for a new flood of inspiring emails and messages as he is one of 12 sports figures to be featured in the recently released book by author Erin Silver called Proud to Play: Canadian LGBTQ+ Athletes Who Made History. The chapter on Radford discusses how he was treated differently when he was growing up and why he made the decision to announce he was gay in 2014 at the peak of his skating career.

“When I look back at my life when I was a kid, if I could’ve picked up a book like that and read about these incredible stories and these LGBTQ+ athletes that have had major success and overcome all these obstacles and really, not have their sexuality define who they are, it would’ve made such a big difference to me,” said Radford, now 36 and retired from competition, in a phone interview. He coaches skating and is currently working on an electronic music album. 

“It would have given me so much more confidence. It would’ve let me know that I wasn’t alone, that I wasn’t odd or weird or I didn’t need to feel shame for who I was which is what I felt at that age because I didn’t understand.”

Radford isn’t the lone Winnipegger included, as former volleyball star Chris Voth also has pages devoted to his story. A star left-side attacker for the University of Manitoba Bisons between 2008-13, Voth made history in 2014 when he came out in a Free Press story, making him the first openly gay athlete on a men’s national team. Voth, a member of Canada’s B team at the time, came out before he began his professional volleyball career overseas. His sexuality wasn’t a problem when he played in the Netherlands, but not every country was as accepting. Despite coming off a career-best season, Voth had a lucrative contract offer pulled at the last second in 2016 due to his sexual orientation. He was able to land on his feet in Finland  on a team where no one had even met someone from the LGBTQ+ community before. A couple months after signing, Voth’s new teammates marched in a gay pride parade with him. They’re the first professional volleyball team to do so.

Similar to Radford, Voth didn’t have any gay role models growing up.

“I thought that I would play my sport and I wouldn’t be able to come out until after my career just like athletes were doing then. So I think this book is really able to speak to and inspire that next generation coming up and show them it’s OK to be gay and play a sport,” said Voth, who retired from the professional game in 2019 to start his coaching career.

“What’s really cool about it, there are athletes from all different sports, which I thought Erin did an amazing job with. There are athletes of all generations and all walks of life. It’s a great representation of the community and the sports community, and I think for kids, if they’re able to see books like this, it’ll inspire them. Maybe it will inspire them to play a sport they thought they couldn’t play before or it inspires them to be able to come out and continue playing their sport. I think the possibilities are endless for that. I think it’s just a really important book to have out there and I’m just incredibly humbled to be a part of it.”

Voth, 30, plans to return to the Netherlands this fall to work as an assistant coach for his former pro team — Amysoft Lycurgus. In the meantime, he’s been chipping away at his master of arts degree at the U of M and working on his thesis titled Shining a Light on the Unseen Athletes where he shares the stories of gay professional team sport athletes. Voth’s chapter in Proud to Play points to a study that determined in the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics, around 60 per cent of the gay women at those Games were competing in team sports. On the men’s side, none were in a team sport. 

Voth makes himself available on social media in case athletes, or anyone for that matter, wants to reach out and ask for help.

“I never pressure people to come out. Depending on their country, on their sport, it produces a lot of other factors,” said Voth.

“I do always wonder why athletes don’t come out so I’ll ask them about it, but I’ll never pressure them because it’s a very personal thing to come out. There can be negative consequences of it. For me, it was very positive of course, so that kind of skews my perspective a little bit… But I just like to hear their stories. Probably for the first time they’re able to actually tell the truth and be themselves. So, I just want to give them the space to do that.”

Radford and Voth said there’s been progress made since they both came out, but a lot of work still needs to be done. They hope Proud to Play — which also features swimmer Mark Tewksbury, wheelchair basketball player Cindy Ouellet, and hockey player Jessica Platt — is a step in the right direction in helping LGBTQ+ athletes being treated no differently than anybody else.

“These are amazing athletes who did amazing things who just happened to be gay… When I was a kid, there were no gay athletes, but now you’re able to find an athlete who plays your sport and you can look up to them and reach out to them and get advice or anything like that,” said Voth.

“That’s a pretty cool thing.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31