But, good stories to share, there is no reason to pretend that all is well in the world macho tirelessly professional sports. Enthusiasts of hate to admit it, but good number of their idols evince attitudes which should have with the brontosaurus.
Heaven help the footballer in Premier League gay rumour. Abuse from the terraces is relentless, the willingness of the authorities to stamp it out conspicuous by their absence. Casual homophobia is tolerated as casual racism is not. The Nasty Britain bares its teeth.
Cricket can be a gentler, more civilized game, but it is vitiated by the same prejudices. If gays cricket players were also common that gay actors or of officials or accountants, Steven Davies would not feel apprehension, as he did before his announcement. The fact that it is the first professional cricket player out while still playing is a black mark against our national game. There must have been others. That seems statistically certain. But they felt clearly intimidated at the prospect of admitting it.
England teammate Jimmy Davies Anderson, married father of two, stressed the fact that there is no homophobia in cricket and, to prove his words, happily posed for gay magazine Attitude last year. Anderson perhaps reason, but cricket fans met may remain skeptical. Things are really simple?
Like many sports, cricket revolves around competitive displays of toughness. If you take a bouncer on the chest, without flinching, you are a man. If you step back, you are a WIMP and must play netball. The game is as war by other means: a testing ground of virility.
It was not always thus. In its early stages, cricket has attracted some bizarre fops, such as the dandy of Regency Beau Brummel, who played a game of first class for Hampshire, 23 points, and three. Nobody would mind sharing a dressing room with a man that bears of silk scarves and rumor have lovers of both sexes. There was a tolerance of human diversity.
But as a game friendly amateur metamorphosed in professional sport we know today, players of more numerous themselves should conform to stereotypes of cartoon of virility. The ideal cricket came from a family of mine in Yorkshire, door size 12 boots and can drink for England. After his retirement from the game, he found the box comment and notice that the cricketers of today were soft and that he never required a sports psychiatrist, eaten broccoli or wear a helmet.
If Steven Davies was nervous before coming out, it is not because he felt surrounded by ignorant fanatics, incapable of behaving decently toward a teammate, but because he knew that his sexuality would make him the odd man out in a world fueled by testosterone. If a player of cricket has a feminine side, he is not interested to explore it. It would be rather West Indian fast bowlers on a hummocky terrain. A culture of laddishness permeates every dressing room in the country.
As with cricket, both with the sport as a whole. In regard to the fight against racism, professional sports can keep its head high. The fact that each Earth football team includes black and white players provided the world with a powerful image of racial harmony.
His record in the fight against homophobia is much less Honourable. Indeed, the history of professional sport is littered with examples of homosexuals who are out of the closet, sometimes after dithering for years and paid a heavy price.
One of the first openly gay U.S. sportsmen was baseball Glenn Burke, who played for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1970s and died of AIDS. Rumours of his activities off-field so alarmed his club that it offered to pay for a lavish honeymoon if he agreed to marry. Burke treated the proposal with the contempt it deserved and was placed in barrels of baseball.
Tragically short life of Burke was taken over in the career of Justin Fashanu, still the only prestigious British footballer to declare gay. It was officially released in 1990, but only after suffering years of abuse and prejudice. Brian Clough, his manager at Nottingham Forest, was so brutally indifferent it prohibited Fashanu of training with the rest of the team. The player has had a volatile, nomadic career, was unloaded by the club after club and finally by committed suicide.
An another gay athlete who had to go through purgatory was the American diver Greg Louganis, who won gold at the Los Angeles and the Olympic Games in Seoul. In Seoul, in 1988, he has not yet come and, unknown to the world of sport, was HIV-positive. When he cracked open the head during a dive and blood infiltrated in the pool, it was in a State of emotional turmoil. Only when he finally told the truth, in a TV interview in 1995, could it make him with his demons.
Attitudes seem to be changing, albeit slowly, even if the fact that gay athletes still make headlines shows how far we have to travel. But each step is cause for celebration.
In the race for the 2008 Olympic Games, the Australian diver Matthew Mitcham stated that he was homosexual. Person casts an eyelid. A year later, the Rugby Union ultra-macho world had to digest news that the Welsh former Captain Gareth Thomas was homosexual. Rugby was the revelation in its wake. Indeed, as soon as Thomas had bared his soul, he realizes that the hostile reaction, he was constantly is largely a product of his imagination.
Steve Davies is likely to go through similar emotions: relief that he shared his secret with the world. gratitude for the support he get; and excitement that it may finally be true to himself. But we should not underestimate the ousts its decision or the courage to take. Admit that you are gay in an environment in which there are many other homosexual people is difficult, but hardly petrifying. Admit you are gay in the locker room in England, surrounded by the kind of men who tend to measure their masculinity by the number of beer they drank and the number of women, that they have beds are another issue.
This is the stuff that real sports heroes.
' Fields of Courage: the bravest chapters of Sport' by Max Davidson is published by Little, Brown in £ 16.99
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