Games On!

Olympic Gold Medal Swimmer & Copresident of the World Outgames Mark Tewksbury tells A&U’s B. Andrew Plant How he’s leveling the playing field for HIVers

It’s definitely a good day when you get to sit down across from a handsome, well-built Olympic swimmer. It’s even better when he is as smart and nice and well-informed as he is attractive. Better still: He is here to talk about HIV/AIDS, and his voice represents an all-too-often ignored facet of the pandemic—how the disease affects the international world of sports.

I had the opportunity to talk with Mark Tewksbury, Olympic Gold Medal swimmer, when he was in Atlanta making a presentation to the Atlanta Executive Network. We rendezvoused at the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center amidst the 15th International Gay & Lesbian Aquatics Championships. The affable Tewksbury—“Tewks” to his friends—dove right into our subject matter.

“[HIV/AIDS] touched me very early in my life,” he says. “My first relationship was a threesome, and I was seventeen years-old. AIDS was just starting to hit the mainstream at that time, and one of the guys found out he was HIV-positive.”

It was a very difficult, very scary time, Tewksbury tells me. “I remember waking up with all of these fears—for him and for me and for us. [But] it was an incredible education for me. I was lucky that one of my first relationships got me talking about safe sex and the importance of taking care of myself.”
That relationship lasted three years and, happily, Tewks reports his friend is still alive.

Tewksbury went on to become one of Canada’s most renowned athletes, garnering three Olympic medals and seven world records. He’s now a paid lecturer, an author (book number two hits U.S. newsstands in May), television host, and more.

His high-profile accomplishments not only led Tewks to a productive career, it also led him to dedicate himself to a number of nonprofit causes, including the Special Olympics and the Children’s Miracle Network. He ultimately stepped out as chair of AIDS Walk Canada. In fact, it was that involvement that led the previously closeted swimmer to “come out”—something he had worried about doing through much of his competitive life—and eventually led to his involvement in a number of other AIDS organizations, including Fashion Cares.

Now he is quite out, most especially including serving as copresident of the 1st World Outgames (slated for July 26–August 5 in Montréal), which is being billed as “an International Rendez-Vous with Sports and Culture.” He’s also a founding director of the Gay and Lesbian International Sport Association, the organization which sanctions the World Outgames.

With his intense, five-year preparatory involvement in “Montréal 2006,” his shorthand for the World Outgames, he has stepped back from AIDS work and many other undertakings. That said, as we talk, it becomes apparent the pandemic is not truly off his radar screen.

“The traditional sporting world is such a closed milieu,” Tewksbury says. “It’s a tough thing for gay athletes who are living in that world. It’s that much harder to be an athlete who is HIV-positive to be out about it. The sports world is maybe not as [up to speed] as it should be about HIV/AIDS.”
And that’s among the many reasons he embraces an opportunity to work in “the gay sports movement. You arrive [on the larger sporting scene] with a half million gay and lesbian and bi and trans people playing sports, and saying, ‘You have to understand these issues…like transgender issues or living with HIV.’

“Instead of having our own criteria, our own policies about these issues,” he says, “we work with established organizations, like the World Anti-Doping Agency [the one that sanctions Olympic drug testing and such] to help them know what they need to know about ‘our issues’ so they can apply lessons on a larger level. It’s a wonderful opportunity to build bridges. To educate.”
What if an athlete has to take a medication that might be seen as putting them at an advantage? For instance, what if they take human growth hormone as part of their HIV regimen? (The use of most hormones is disallowed in most sports settings.)

“As in traditional sports, if you have to take a certain medication…you are allowed,” Tewks answers easily, “because that’s not putting the person at an advantage; rather, you are putting that person at an equal level.’ These are subtle but important differences we need to communicate to and about the larger community of sports.”

Being part of a movement that can do that kind of education, make change and, in doing so, bring people together, is what first attracted him to the Olympic movement, Tewksbury tells me. Then he circles back to a more personal anecdote.

“My workout partner is one of the first diagnosed cases [of AIDS] in Canada,” he says. As they became friends and the workout partner revealed his status, along with the special challenges he faces as a long-term survivor of HIV, Tewksbury says he got an entirely new take on the disease.

“I suppose I still didn’t realize the kind of impact it has on someone to be diagnosed with HIV or AIDS and how that changes your whole psyche,” he says. “My wonderful relationship with him has been a real eye-opener, and has certainly grown the level of my compassion. It’s made it so plain for me why we must get rid of all stigmas around living with HIV.”

As we talk about others who live with HIV/AIDS that he knows, he returns again and again to his workout partner, noting, “How grateful I am for that education; the education I’ve gotten through my friendship with him.”

“To break down barriers is very, very exciting,” Tewksbury says as we wrap things up, interrupted occasionally by swimmers cavorting about the aquatic center. “Through my experiences, I’ve learned that gay rights are human rights. HIV/AIDS rights are human rights. When we realize that, it improves our [collective] humanity. That kind of understanding is fundamental to what we’re doing in the international sports movement.”

Keep up with the many activities of Mark Tewksbury by visiting www.marktewksbury.com.
For more on the World Outgames, visit . For more on the Gay and Lesbian International Sport Association, visit www.glisa.org.

Special thanks to Dr. Barbara J. Rubin for making this interview possible.

B. Andrew Plant is Editor at Large for A&U.

March 2006