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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Ski jumper Andrzej Stękała has become Poland’s first major male athlete to come out as gay, doing so in an emotional statement following the death of his partner.
“What I am about to write is the hardest thing in my life,” wrote Stękała, a bronze medallist at the 2021 Nordic World Ski Championships. “For years I lived in hiding, afraid that who I was could erase everything I worked so hard for.”
“I want you to get to know me for real. I am gay,” added the athlete in an Instagram post accompanied by photos and videos of him and his late partner. “We loved each other in silence, hiding our love from the world to protect what was most important to us.”
Stękała revealed his partner, who he did not name, had died in November after they had been together for eight years. “He was everything to me: my home, my heart,” wrote the ski jumper.
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Stękała’s coming out received a positive response from a fellow member of Poland’s national ski jumping team, former world championship gold medallist Maciej Kot, who praised his colleague’s decision as a “show of strength”. Ski jumping is one of Poland’s most popular sports.
In response to his post, Stękała has received over 60,000 likes and many supportive comments, including from Norwegian ski jumper Halvor Egner Granerud and Polish politician and LGBT+ rights activist Robert Biedroń.
“Sport, like any other area of life, should be a space of equality, solidarity and support,” wrote Biedroń in a separate Instagram post. “Unfortunately, reality is different: it is full of exclusion, fear and pressure to fit into imposed patterns.”
“Andrzej Stękała, with his honest confession, shed light on a problem that there is often silent about: a dehumanising system that forces athletes to hide who they really are,” added the politician.
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Top-level male sport has often been a difficult place for athletes to come out as non-heterosexual. However, in 2015, Canadian ski jumper Eric Mitchell also came out as gay.
Polish sports news website Sportowe Fakty notes that some prominent female Polish athletes have come out, including Olympic medallists Katarzyna Zillmann, a rower, and Jolanta Ogar-Hill, a sailor. But no leading male athletes have done so before Stękała.
Poland has seen intense debate and disputes over LGBT+ issues in recent years, in particular under the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government that ruled the country from 2015 to 2023, during which time it led a vocal campaign against what it calls “LGBT ideology”.
As a result, Poland has been ranked as the worst country in the European Union for LGBT+ people for the last five years running. The current, more liberal government has pledged to improve LGBT+ rights, but has so far failed to introduce any such laws.
Poland has been ranked as the worst country in the EU for LGBT+ people for the fifth year in a row https://t.co/5ciljeroir
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) May 15, 2024
Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Main image credit: Marek Podmokly / Agencja Wyborcza.pl
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
