“I saw that the first openly gay footballer just came out in Australia (Josh Cavallo) a month or two ago. Although most of those players, such as Brian Vahaly, came out after retiring from the sport. There are currently no openly gay players and only a small handful in the past. However, on the men’s Tour it is somewhat different. Tennis is renowned for having some of the most formidable LGBT athletes over the years with the likes of pioneers such as Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova who were among some of the first to speak openly about their sexuality. The idea is to get players to wear rainbow laces in order to raise awareness of LGBT representation within sport. The Rainbow Laces initiative was created by LGBT charity Stonewall and initially marketed specifically towards football’s Premier League before later expanding into other sports.
“And the LGBTQ community, I mean, a lot of those guys have given me a lot of support throughout my career and have been there since day one, so I kind of wanted to give a thank you in my own sort of way.” I know obviously within men’s tennis - is it a taboo? I don’t think it’s really a taboo, but I’ve seen questions before about why there aren’t any openly gay men on the tour, and I just wanted to kind of voice my support in that kind of general area,” Broady explained during his press conference. “I just kind of wanted to send the support.
Throughout the match the world No.128 was wearing rainbow laces and he did so for a special reason. The reason as to why they were doing that particular chant was unclear.īroady ended up falling 6-4, 6-4, 6-3, to Kyrgios who will next play the formidable Daniil Medvedev. At times the atmosphere resembled that a football match with fans drinking beer and chanting Christiano Roinaldo’s ‘siu’ celebration. Taking to the John Cain Arena for his night-time clash against Nick Kyrgios, the qualifier embarked upon a situation he had never experienced before with a boisterous crowd cheering on their home player.