Canadian swimmer Martha McCabe, who competed in the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games, has come out as a lesbian in order to help other LGBTQ+ swimmers accept their identity.
Speaking to CBC, she said she had at least ten teammates who identified as LGBTQ+ when she competed for the Canadian national team, and that there were probably 30 to 40 LGBTQ+ swimmers when she competed at a university level.
However, all of the openly LGBTQ+ swimmers she knew of were all men, giving her no role model as a female LGBTQ+ athlete. “For me, swimming was the world,” she explained. “Sure, I probably knew a couple of lesbians outside of swimming, but I was barely paying attention to my life outside of swimming. “The people I looked up to were in swimming.