Sochi, Russia- While Russia’s laws concerning displays of LGBT Pride have sparked international headlines, the few out athletes at this year’s Winter Olympic Games remained focused and took several medals for their respective countries.
This year, seven out women competed at the games, and two of them brought home medals in 2014.
Dutch speed skater Ireen Wust, 27, swept gold in the women’s 3000 meter and two silvers in the 1000 and 1400s meter races. The crowd-pleasing skater won gold in the 3000m at the Winter Games in Turin.
“I’m here to skate very fast,” she said, when asked about her sexual orientation and Russia’s laws.
The fourth out Sochi medal is the silver captured by Austrian ski-jumper Daniela Iraschko-Stolz, 30, in Sochi’s historic debut of women’s ski-jumping.
Iraschko-Stolz, known as “Pinky” to her teammates, married her wife in 2011 and the pair hyphenated their last names.
The ski jumper has said little about her sexuality while in Russia, but after winning her medal, she shared this:
“I hope for the future that the people now can see the sport as a chance to change something,” she said. “That would be nice. Because everyone looks at Russia and its laws, and I think it’s a good idea to change something.”
