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It was a vision that clearly captivated the gay and lesbian
world securing Sydney the right to recapture international attention following
the Olympics. It was a vision of a mass sporting and cultural event staged
in a tolerant, sun-drenched city in the Southern Hemisphere, an ideal place to
celebrate "new experiences, new adventures and new friends". All in all a perfect location for the world's biggest gathering of gays, lesbians and transgenders, attracting 14,500 sporting and cultural participants -- more even than an Olympics. It will be the first event of its kind to be staged in this part of the gay universe -- a kind of athletic Mardi Gras stretched over eight days in November next year. |
Let
The Gay Games Begin |
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Although it will be the biggest event in Sydney between the Olympics and the 2003 World Cup of rugby, the Gay Games have received scant mainstream attention and, curiously for a notably creative and gregarious community, sought even less. The first Gay Games were held in San Francisco in 1982, intended partly as a means of emphasising the "normality" of gays and lesbians. The Sydney Games will be the sixth. "Events cater for competitive and recreational athletes," explains a Sydney 2002 brochure, "with the main emphasis on participating in sport, achieving your personal best and having fun." In addition to the sport, a cultural program is planned, including choirs, marching bands and poetry as well as conferences on gay and lesbian issues. If all goes well, these Games will be another defining moment for Sydney. The event is likely to attract many more international visitors than a succession of Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Between 25,000 and 30,000 people are expected to attend, according to estimates, injecting a conservative figure of A$100 million into the NSW economy. But with almost as many problems as SOCOG before the Olympics -- and with a fraction of the budget and sans State Government financial support -- there's far more earnestness than gaiety surrounding the preparations. Not to mention outright cynicism. There are those who dismiss the Gay Games as an indulgence by a hedonistic community, deriding the fact that it's not even a strictly gay event because people of all sexual orientations are welcome to participate. The reality remains that it will be an overwhelmingly gay gathering, focused around Oxford Street in Darlinghurst, King Street in Newtown and the city's major sporting venues at Moore Park and Homebush Bay. With no equivalent of an Olympic village to house them, participants will stay in city hotels, apartments, bed-and-breakfasts and with friends. Forty per cent of athletes will come from North America, bringing with them so-called pink dollars in the form of lucrative greenbacks. Current plans allow for an opening ceremony at the Sydney Football Stadium at Moore Park. Organisers had wanted to use the Olympic Stadium but baulked at the cost of hiring it for a single night, feeling that it would be difficult to fill an 80,000-seat facility, even if they managed to persuade leading international performers to get on stage. But prospective overseas visitors are known to see the Olympic site as a major incentive to attend, and there may be more discussion on the subject. Getting gym-honed buns on seats is only one of a multitude of challenges facing the organisers. There are those who worry that an unsuccessful Gay Games has the potential to tarnish the reflected glory of the Olympic Games and damage the standing of the gay community in community, corporate and government circles. Although the budget is a comparatively meagre $11 million, in a post-Olympics environment which has seen the sponsorship dollar become as difficult to identify as a Michael Knight admirer, the concerns seem justified. Organisers, for example, are not sure if they will even be able to afford CBD street banners at Games time without sponsor support. Indeed, with 500 or so days to go, there is still no principal sponsor. Thus far only a handful of sponsors -- including Qantas, Hertz and the City of Sydney -- have agreed to support the event and not all of them with cash contributions. South Sydney Council has provided shopfront office space for Sydney 2002 and is planning yet another refurbishment of Taylor Square in time for the Games. One mooted feature is for eight-metre-high masts squirting mist across Oxford Street. But the Gay Games will need much more than fountains to impress visitors after the success of the Olympics. "The wider community will not be sympathetic to a financially disastrous Gay Games," says one source. "There's a concern in the [gay and lesbian] community that we're going to be dragged through the mud. Not everyone in the gay community can give a flying f--- for the Gay Games. "There's a lot of people who when they think sport, think 'yuck'. But if the Government has to bail out the Games it'll undermine the credibility of the community." With the State Government already refusing to underwrite the Games, however, it is unlikely to dig deep even in a crisis. There are those, too, who recall Amsterdam -- the host city of the previous Gay Games in 1998 -- where the city council felt compelled to inject about A$4 million into the event to avoid the international ignominy of a failed Games. Profits have proved noticeably elusive for the five Games to date. The person charged with turning these perceptions around is Geoffrey Williams, the 53-year-old former manager of cultural affairs and protocol for the City of Sydney. Williams has been appointed the new chief executive of the Gay Games 2002 -- its second CEO. While at the City of Sydney, Williams was involved in the staging of Lord Mayor Frank Sartor's attention-grabbing New Year's Eve fireworks display. Wearing a black suit, purple shirt and matching tie of a similar hue, Williams is certainly the nattiest dresser of any major event CEO. But, with the challenge that confronts him, you suspect that it won't be long before he's having to roll up those smartly tailored sleeves. He says that it's "change-gear time" for the organisers with 17 months to go. In a major event terms that's not much time at all. His task, after all, is such a formidable one. His brief must be to deliver a world-class event of world stature on a budget that probably wouldn't have covered the bill for the first half-hour of the Olympic Games opening ceremony. The State Government's reluctance to support such a big event financially is part of a philosophy of not indulging taxpayers dollars in "corporate welfare" to privately run events. Instead it is providing support in kind, such as office accommodation near Macquarie Street and logistical support. Williams rather bravely declares that he accepts that Government assistance is almost certainly not going to materialise, no matter the circumstances in which the Gay Games finds itself. Even public criticism of the Government's intransigence by Williams's predecessor, Garrie Gibson, failed to result in a policy shift. The Gay Games will have to go it alone in the uncertain private sector. "The big challenge is in sponsorship and fundraising," says Williams. II don't think that there's been enough attention to fundraising because of sponsorship expectations. The pink dollar is considered highly attractive to the major corporations but they still obviously need to be led to the trough. "But we're not going to deliver a Games that has to be bailed out. We'll deliver a Games according to the budget we have. "It's been very bad for the Gay Games to have been left with a big deficit from New York and Amsterdam. That's not going to happen here under my stewardship." Not that Williams would refuse any last-minute largesse from the State Government. He agrees that the Gay Games represents a rare opportunity for Sydney to underline its status as a beacon of tolerance and inclusiveness. He says that the international gay community will be coming to "a place that's got it right". He points out that some of those attending the Gay Games in Sydney will be coming from nations where institutionalised persecution of gay people persists. Williams has been joined by Bev Lange, an ex-Mardi Gras president, as part of the new team running Sydney 2002. Lange will be co-chair of the Games. Her expertise in running a successful event like Mardi Gras could prove more than useful for the Gay Games. She concedes there is some apprehension in the community about the Games. The fact that she felt some apprehension herself contributed to her decision to become involved at the highest level. "I'd been hearing some differing stories," says Lange. "I'd been hearing that people weren't confident about the Games being delivered. There's still a bit of nervousness around but I think we can turn the thing around and deliver the Games they're expecting." In the labrynthine world of gay politics, one pressing issue for Sydney 2002 has been how closely it should align itself, if at all, with Mardi Gras -- and vice versa. Mardi Gras appears to have remained circumspect of the Gay Games, through fear of being associated with the potential for failure and controversy. As Williams points out, there are manifest advantages for the Gay Games to building better links. Mardi Gras offers a significant volunteers database and political acumen. With shades of SOCOG, Lange's arrival as co-chair coincided with the departure of key board members. The 'Sydney Star Observer' reported that one figure close to the Gay Games had felt that volunteers had been treated with "contempt and arrogance" and that they were "distressed and angry about the undemocratic process" by which the new board appointments were made. The former Adelaide Festival director, Robyn Archer, who was appointed to run the cultural festival component of the Gay Games, left to take on the directorship of the Melbourne Festival. However, Archer's departure was said to have been devoid of bitterness because she and others simply realised that Sydney 2002 would never have had the budget to fulfil her vision. One major source of
revenue for Sydney 2002 is in registrations of those attending.
Participants in the Gay Games pay fees to take part in sporting and cultural
events. Lange says the rate of registrations is "on target". |
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