Hong Kong hosted ‘best Gay Games ever’, event a step forward in battle for LGBTQ rights in city, organisers say at closing ceremony
- Gay Games Hong Kong co-chair Lisa Lam says ‘it’s only a small step in a long journey’
- Some participants express disappointment over the low numbers at the controversy-hit Games
“It’s great to see so many people coming together, that is what the Gay Games is all about, bringing people from all backgrounds together,” Lisa Lam, co-chair of the Hong Kong event, said. “But it’s only a small step in a long journey [for the LGBTQ community].”
About 2,400 participants from Hong Kong, mainland China, the rest of Asia, the United States, Europe and Australia competed across 18 events, far short of the 15,000 athletes and 36 sports first envisioned.
“We delivered the first Games in Asia. The Gay Games happening here shows the world that Hong Kong can be equal,” Lam added.
The Gay Games Hong Kong co-chair said the organisers were exhausted after some had contributed more than five years of their lives as volunteers to make the event happen.
Federation of Gay Games co-president Joanie Evans said the city’s event was “the benchmark” for future events.
“It has been the best Games ever,” Evans said at the closing ceremony.
She added that everything had been “perfect” in relation to the sports and the organisation.
One of the few officials to publicly back the event, Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, convenor of the city’s top decision-making Executive Council, attended the opening ceremony and welcomed participants to Hong Kong.
Human rights activists called for the event to be cancelled and a team in Taiwan said they would not attend for fear of breaching the national security law.
Hong Kong singers, drag queens and multinational dance groups were among the performers at the closing ceremony at Queen Elizabeth Stadium in Wan Chai on Saturday.
The stadium holds about 3,500 people and appeared to be about 50 per cent full.
A Games veteran, who gave his name as Jon and said he went to college with their founder Tom Waddell, said he was disappointed by the low turnout.
“I liked it a lot, but I’m sad there are so few people here, and there was a lot of talk that the government would interfere with [Gay Games Hong Kong],” said the retired 80-year-old, who travelled from San Francisco with his Chinese husband.
Jon said that at previous Gay Games in the United States and Paris, he had seen thousands of people at swimming events – at which he won three gold medals this time – but in Hong Kong, there were only “several hundred”.
“I knew a lot of people who wanted to come, but they didn’t because they were scared it would be cancelled,” he added.
A spokesman for Valencia Gay Games 2026 told the Post that organisers hoped to attract 10,000 participants, about four times as many as in Hong Kong.
He said the Valencia local government had promised to provide public venues for all events free of charge, which Hong Kong authorities did not do.
Games participant Owen Liu, 39, from the mainland, said meeting people like Jon was what the event was all about.
“It was great to meet people from different walks of life,” Liu, a start-up manager from Chengdu, Sichuan province, who also competed in swimming events, said.
He added that, as a gay man who used to live in Hong Kong before he returned to the mainland, the Games had given the community a bigger voice.
“The most important thing is that people saw us [the LGBTQ community] doing sports and realised that we are no different to them,” Liu said.
Jan Schneider, vice-president of production at the Federation of Gay Games, before the closing event also praised the Hong Kong team but admitted the event had been less high-profile than previous ones.
“On the one hand, that is to be expected in a city like Hong Kong where there is a lot going on,” he said, a reference to the lack of posters around the city. “But you would still expect to see more than there has been.”
But he added that, despite the controversy in the build-up, the organisers had done well to get the event on.
