Last year, the open house for the International Gay Figure Skating Union, co-founded by Moore, drew six people. Directly after the Amsterdam Games in '98, an average of five wrestlers showed up weekly at the Metro Gay Wrestling Alliance now the number has nearly tripled. Both numbers are expected to be much higher for the 2002 Games in Sydney, Australia.īlane Roberts, a former vice president of Front Runners, a gay and lesbian running group, said the New York chapter had 431 members in 1996. The 1982 San Francisco Gay Games had 1,350 athletes and a budget of $125,000, while the '94 New York Games had 11,000 athletes and a $6.5 million budget. Participation in gay and lesbian sports has increased steadily, both in New York and worldwide. ''I think we can really make a difference in people's lives.''
''Many gay and lesbian people feel funny, feel awkward, feel they're not being accepted on a regular team,'' said Gursky, who also swims on a masters team. ''I realized it was going to be me or nobody.''
''It showed all of us that there was a need to have an organization, it was just a question of who was going to do it,'' said Gursky. Gursky called everyone she knew, took out two ads in community newspapers, reserved a room and hoped for the best. In 1997, an officer for the 1998 Gay Games in Amsterdam phoned Ruth Gursky - an active volunteer since the 1990 Vancouver Games - and asked her to set up a meeting to generate interest in New York. But the group disbanded after each Games and hurriedly reorganized just before the next one. Team New York has existed since the first Gay Games in San Francisco in 1982 and has sent athletes to all four quadrennial games since. The run was expected to draw about 1,000 people, the swim meet up to 200 entrants from four countries. Yesterday, Team New York sponsored three events as part of the second annual Team New York Sports and Cultural Festival during Gay Pride Week: a two-mile community challenge run in Central Park, the NYSwimillennium2000, a 14-event meet at Lehman College in the Bronx, and the Metro Gay Wrestling Alliance Tournament and Open Mat Clinic at the McBurney Y.M.C.A. Moore is now the vice president of Team New York, an organization that was reinvented in late 1997 to foster sports and cultural events for gays and lesbians. I belong to a global gay sports community.''
I totally feel for the first time in my life that I am part of a community. But I have done more with skating and skating has done more for me than I could ever have imagined. I know I'm never going to do a triple jump. ''I finally felt like, O.K., this is the life that I was supposed to have. ''It was pretty exciting, to say the least,'' said Moore, who is now 44. In the 1994 Gay Games in New York, she initiated a figure skating meet - overcoming skepticism from organizers that the event would not flourish during the summer games - and became part of the first lesbian pairs team to compete. So, 12 years ago, she left her husband, moved to New York City and signed up for an ice skating class. Moore realized she was gay at an early age, but by the time she was 30 she found herself married and living in the suburbs, desperately ill with a stress-related disease and hating everything about her life. So it came as a surprise when she later found herself through sports, specifically in competitions among gay athletes. She graduated from high school with a special dispensation because she did not have a single gym credit. During kickball games she switched teams every half-inning so she would not have to play, and nobody complained because they didn't want her playing, either. Shy and klutzy, incapable of catching a ball, Moore failed gym 12 times.
While living in East Africa, she read a book about a poor, sickly child befriended by a star skater. When Laura Moore was growing up, she dreamed of being an Olympic figure skater.