Every Athlete Has a

Story

ON THE RINK: Top Canadian skater Matthew Hall.

ID RA

FIGURE SKATING CULA

ATTHEW HALL has ice in his blood, you might say, having inherited his love for the frozen

I parquet from his father, a professional hockey coach for 18 years. According to the younger Hall, though, Dad I went glacial on him about his preference for figure skating. Hall admits that from an early age "jumping around on the ice" held a stronger interest for him than waddling a stick. across it.

At 16 Hall was already Canada's top junior. He was an alternate for the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, and the bronze medalist at the Canadian National Championships the next year in Chicoutimi, Quebec. "I never used to really think about anything," he says

O N

I C

ΕΙ

about his turns on the rink. "But for I four-and-a-half minutes I thought of I every second, of speed, and total fluidiI ty." And it evidently paid off once again | when the skater came in seventh in the I 1993 Canadian Nationals. However, I Hall counts as an equal achievement coming back that year as an openly | gay athlete. "I want to show there are gay world-class athletes who can compete," he says.

As a full-time choreographer, Hall also puts his degree in graphic design to use on the ice by conceptualizing his own costumes. "I'm keeping my Dracula program for Gay Games IV," he says, describing one of his winning routines. For Matthew Hall, skating to the eerie soundtrack of Francis Ford Coppola's chiller, well, it just makes his blood run gold.-E.W.

THE

GOLF

HOLE

THING

S A BRONX NEIGHBOR MIGHT say, Jim Dorrian should know from golf!

Dorrian, 39, grew up just blocks from the Split Rock and Pelham Bay courses that will host the Gay Games tournament he's organizing. At age 12, he would sneak onto the courses with friends to play 50 or 60 holes of golf. "I was a golf fanatic," he says.

Dorrian is dedicating the Gay Games tournament to his lover of three years. When they began dating, Dorrian was taken aback by his friend's open admission that he was HIV positive. "He told me from the get-go what the story was, and we practice safe sex," Dorrian says. "And I still

WOMEN'S WRESTLING IN

GRANDMOTHER

N "ARMY BRAT" who was raised in France, Germany, Japan, "and about 38 of the 50 states," Brooklynite Juanita Harvey is amused by the nutshell in which she is summed up so often: African-American grandmother, and lesbian wrestler. Though it may evoke an image of, say, Miss Jane Pittman in Spandex, she is anything but aged and frail, as grannies go. Despite having two grandkids, and even some firsthand recollec-

can't keep my hands off him." They share a house in upstate New York.

Sports-and homosexuality-are not unknown in Dorrian's family. His father played in the 1956 Olympics on the American soccer team. And his grandfather, now 92, owned two New York gay bars in the 1950s. "He would tell stories of Rock Hudson and Cardinal Spellman coming in to his places," says the youngest Dorrian.

A former New York City police officer, he has marched with the Gay Officers Action League in Boston and Washington, but Stonewall 25 will mark his first time marching in New York. Of the first Gay Pride parade Dorrian ever attended, he says, "I stood on the corner, saying, how could that guy be gay? And that one? I was mesmerized by the crowd and how we took over the city."-BOB NELSON

SPANDEX

Competing as a wrestler brings mental, emotional, and spiritual elements into play for Harvey. "You're playing chess," she explains. "My tions of a Jim Crow South, Harvey is body's the board, and my arms and only 38 years old.

Three years ago Harvey laughed when she saw an ad recruiting women wrestlers; as odd-gal-out among three brothers, the only wrestling she'd done before was "to make sure I got my share of food," she laughs. Later, a wrestler herself, she was intrigued and challenged by her sport's consummate workout of muscles she didn't even know existed, "sometimes down to the tips of my fingers." But, she emphasizes, the workout is "not just physical."

legs, my fingers, my eyes and ears are all the pieces." But wrestling's appeal to Harvey is that it allows her "to be a strong woman," she says. "You don't have to jeopardize your femininity, and can acknowledge your masculinity."

Juanita Harvey's shrewd appraisal of her powerful playing pieces pays off, she says, "when I get on the mat and I see the fear in their eyes." This grandma's hands may make you cry "Uncle!"-E.W.

GAY GAMES IV

PHOTOGRAPH BY LINA BERTUCCI

ON THE MAT: Juanita Harvey (center, left) and her teammates.

TENNIS A

RAISING

RACKET

HIRTY-FOUR-YEAR-OLD Robin Rothhammer says her awful temper used to hold her back in tennis, maybe because as a kid she played just to please her parents. She was introduced to the game when she was nine. "I had an ear infection at day camp," she says, "and so they sent me to the tennis courts."

A teen competitor and a college player, Rothhammer then gave up competing until she started "getting serious again" in 1988 by playing tournaments. She soon achieved high ratings in her age group and was recently No. 7 in the

Eastern Tennis Association's rankings for women of all ages. "I've learned so much about myself as a person through tennis," says Rothhammer, who has been the editor of Tennis Week magazine and has also taught the game. And having fielded both sides of the net, Rothhammer considers it another kind of challenge to be playing at the Gay Games. "I identify as a bisexual who lives a monogamous, heterosexual life," says Rothhammer, who is married with two children. and lives in the suburbs. Recognizing the strong network and community that gay and lesbian people have, she says it is wrong that bisexuals lack a voice, since "The whole point of the Gay Games is inclusion and pride."

Like the tempestuous John McEnroe, one of her tennis heroes, Robin Rothhammer can still find a thing or two worth raising a racket about.-E.W.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN BENTHAM