GAY

Games

IV

Every Athlete Has

Բ

A STORY

Athletes end up at the Games

for all kinds of reasons. Here eight individuals share how they got here from there.

50

IR UN

B

TRACK AND FIELD FOR

YOUR

I

LIFEI

I

RENT NICHOLSON EARL IS A HUMAN FUSE. AI veteran of Gay Games II and III, he made a 1,000-mile I special delivery of the Games' rainbow flag with his I Rainbow Run for the End of AIDS in 1990 from San I Francisco to Vancouver, British Columbia. This year I I the flag that opens Gay Games IV will have been unfurled six weeks | before, borne valiantly for 4,400 miles across the country by Earl's relay team of in-line skaters.

Dubbed the Rainbow Roll, the six-week media I event promotes both the Games and AIDS-preven| tion education. The six-member, multicultural, co[ gender team left San Francisco April 29, the colorful banner in tow. (For daily updates on the Roll's progress, supporters can call 212-592-3683.)

Earl, a 43-year-old New Yorker, is bestknown for "what people to this day still refer to as the run across America," he says with a chuckle. Indeed, the American Run for the End of AIDS, Earl's incredible 20-month solo run from 1986 into 1987 took him around the nation's perimeter, the first accomplishment of its kind. The driver of the support vehicle was Earl's mom, who died three years ago. "She was the only road-crew member to have gone the entire distance around America," says Earl, "and on the Rainbow Run as well."

Competitive races notwithstanding, Earl says his athletic career has been "all tied in with his activism." As an openly HIV-positive athlete, his mission is to instill a sense of longevity and survival in the younger generation of lesbians and gay men "who somehow feel that AIDS is not going to touch their lives." The Rainbow Roll marks another departure for this road warrior-cum-blade-runner, and Brent Nicholson Earl is a pitch on wheels.

-ERIC WASHINGTON

PHOTOGRAPHS BY SKID

GAY GAMES IV

NO BICYCLE RIDING

ON A ROLL: Skaters (from left) Brent Nicholson Earl Ken Moody Alison Sawyer, and Margo SuSan