After his gold-medal swim in the 1992 Summer Games, Canadian swimmer Mark Tewksbury was in the mood to celebrate. He went to a Barcelona gay bar and stood outside on the sidewalk.

"I had always promised myself that as soon as I was done, I'd start to live my life, so I was ready," Mr. Tewksbury said in a recent interview.

Not ready enough as it turned out. Despite an aching curiosity, he didn't go inside the bar. "I was, sort of, too afraid to go in, fearing that reporters were sort of hovering."

At the time, the celebrated swimmer had told only a female friend that he was gay. Despite his desire to celebrate his "big moment," Mr. Tewksbury was a closeted gay athlete and he loathed the thought of bringing attention to his sexual orientation. "It was still a huge, deep, dark secret."

Flash forward 17 years to gay-friendly Whistler, where event organizer Dean Nelson hopes to neutralize the fear and loathing that homosexuality still inspires in elite athletic circles.

For the first time in Olympic history, a Pride House will be set up for gay athletes, spectators and the general public.

The pavilion has sponsors, a swank address - off the lobby of the Pan Pacific Hotel at the foot of Blackcomb Mountain - and organizers hope it might turn into a social hot spot at the mountain resort town next February.

Mr. Nelson, who organized WinterPride celebrations at Whistler, hopes the rainbow-themed lounge might even change a few attitudes. "Homophobia is still so prevalent in the sporting culture," he said. "Here in Canada for the most part, we can live our full authentic lives, but a gay athlete in Canada doesn't really have that same liberty."

Despite positive buzz in Vancouver and Whistler, some athletes have expressed doubts about the usefulness of a pride pavilion plunked into the most important, pressure-filled weeks of an amateur athlete's career.

Some online gay chat sites have suggested it could become a beacon for paparazzi. Others say closeted gay athletes wouldn't be caught dead near a pride pavilion, reducing the venue to a nicely-decorated information booth that dispenses brochures on gay rights.

Would Mr. Tewksbury go?

"You see, I just don't know," he said. "If it was my Olympics and I was 24 and the world was how it is today, I would probably be there, wanting to meet other gay athletes, but who knows? I sure wasn't there in 1992."

If anything, the Olympic Pride House has already touched off a discussion about the scarcity of openly gay athletes in amateur and professional sports.

Despite huge strides securing equal rights in the workplace, in the domestic union arena and even in some Christian churches, gays and lesbians have not seen advances in the sports world. In fact, their presence is rarely even acknowledged, especially in professional sports.

Of the 3,400 athletes in the four major professional leagues - the National Football League, the National Hockey League, the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball - there are no openly gay players, said Eric Anderson, a gay former high school coach turned author and sociologist.

There has never been an openly gay male hockey player.

Some athletes have come out after their competitive careers ended. In his book Alone in the Trenches, former NFL defensive lineman Esera Tuaolo described chronic fear and loneliness throughout his nine-year professional football career. During a 1999 Super Bowl game, he was terrified the camera would pan to him.

"What if one of those billion people watching recognized me as the stranger he had picked up in a gay bar?" wrote Mr. Tuaolo. "My football career would be finished."

In amateur elite sports, the number of openly gay athletes can be counted on a single hand. Of the more than 10,000 athletes at the Beijing Games, Australian diver Matthew Mitcham was the lone gay male athlete out of the closet. Nine openly lesbian athletes were counted.

U.S. Equestrian Robert Dover, one of the few Olympians who came out of the closet during his competitive career, said he liked the idea of a pride pavilion at the 2010 Winter Games, even if it just serves to get athletes and coaches and sponsors thinking about the issue.

"If it educates, if it allows people to recognize the fact that there are huge numbers of summer and winter Olympians who are gay," then the Pride House has indeed accomplished something, he said.

Mr. Dover and Mr. Tewksbury said they never dreamed that there would still be so few openly gay athletes in 2009.

"I wish I had the secret answer," Mr. Tewksbury said. "I really, truly thought that 10 years ago you would not have to call me in 10 years to be talking about this."

The reasons gay athletes prefer life in the closet are complicated and vast. Many fear losing lucrative sponsorships. Others believe revelations about sexual orientation could distract their teammates and hamper performances.

"Athletes are very loyal," said Helen Carroll, director of the Sports Project at the San Francisco-based National Center for Lesbian Rights. "We have basically been taught to think that it will really hurt the image of the team, and it will bring negative press or it will bring an amount of press that will hurt the focus of the team.

"These things combined have really kept the athlete and the coach silent."
Some athletes and coaches interviewed believe this fear of censure is more imagined than real.

Mr. Dover, who competed in six Summer Games and won medals at four, came out in 1988. The decision didn't hurt his career or his performances. "From 1992 to 2004, I was standing on podiums getting medals around my neck the entire time and it never once got in my way."

Despite the dearth of gay pro athletes, some experts say the playing field is quickly changing - for the better. Mr. Anderson, who wrote two books on homosexuality in sport, has interviewed hundreds of high school and college athletes.

He also says he was the first openly gay high school athletic coach in the United States, and that the teenage athletic scene is far more receptive to openly gay athletes today. Within a decade, he predicted, these teenagers will fill the ranks of professional sports.

"They [teens] are not homophobic," said Mr. Anderson, now a sociologist at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom. "They've grown up with it in the media, they have openly gay friends."

High schools have support groups for gay and lesbian students and gay youth are more conscious of their rights, he said.

"Youth today don't bond over homophobia," Mr. Anderson said. "You have to look at the overall trend and the overall trend shows that gays and lesbians are being treated better all the time."

Mr. Tewksbury said he will be curious to see if athletes attend the pride pavilion at Whistler.

"Now people will have a choice," he said. "Before, it was like [homosexuality] didn't even exist."