Out in the slopes
Former professional snowboarder Ryan Miller chats with fab’s Matt Thomas
about coming out in the world of competitive winter sports.

“There’s definitely a natural rush to it,” says snowboarder Ryan Miller. “On a powder day, you feel like you’re floating and you’re free and there’s no boundaries.” Miller started snowboarding at 12, when the sport was still considered an oddity, and soon discovered he excelled at competitive alpine racing. “I was in marching band, I was in choir and theatre, but then I skied and snowboarded on the side after school, seven days a week,” remembers Miller. “I didn’t do team sports at school because, for the most part, it was all about that stereotypical macho posturing.”

Growing up in a sheltered community 45 minutes outside Philadelphia, Miller felt like an outsider. “Gay people in my area weren’t exactly flying Pride flags or having parades or even walking around holding hands. I never really had someone to look at to see that what I was feeling wasn’t bizarre,” remembers Miller. He finally put the pieces together as a sophomore in college, when he connected with a fellow student who was the first openly gay man he’d ever met. It took a year for Miller to become comfortable with his sexuality and come out to his family and friends.

“During all of this, I was still competing — building my skills, reputation and results while trying to keep a double life going,” recalls Miller. “If I went to do trade shows or appearances with some of the brands that I was riding, it was hard being in a very heterocentric world. In the industry, they know how to have a good time, and we were always going to nightclubs, and it wasn’t really working for me, but you have to do it because it’s part of the job.”

In December of 2000, Miller found himself on a professional snowboarding team that was practising in Whistler, BC. One night, his fellow team members were looking to blow off some steam in Vancouver and tried to drag him out to a female strip joint. “They kept pressuring me to go with them and I told them I had plans, but they were like, ‘What’s wrong with you, why don’t you want to go?’ They kept teasing me, then finally one of them said ‘What’s wrong with you, are you gay?’ Without even thinking, I turned to them and said, ‘Actually I am, and if you don’t mind I have a dinner engagement to get to,’ and then I left.”

Although some team members were supportive, the fallout from Miller’s coming out hit harder than he expected. “Some teammates didn’t want to share a hotel room with me. My coaching relationships changed. Where I was getting regular feedback, now I was getting none,” says Miller. He left that team and joined another that accepted him with open arms, but as word got around in the snowboarding world, things got tougher.

“’Why don’t you take the skirt off this run?’ a competitor would say. A coach would say to another athlete, ‘Better not let him catch up to you from behind.’ Athletes, coaches and even offi cials would say things like that in the start jack when I was getting ready to push out,” laments Miller. “It almost made me put too much pressure on myself because I felt that even if I did my best and came in 12 or six and I didn’t beat someone, then it almost proved their point that I wasn’t good enough because I was gay.”

Miller didn’t let the pressure stop him from competing even when, in training for the 2002 Olympic trials, he hit a major snag. “Free or deeply discounted equipment, which was standard for anyone at my level at the time, stopped coming. Calls stopped being answered, and long-term company relationships that I’d had for four or five years just suddenly went cold.“ Without sponsorship, life on the pro circuit was next to impossible, but in stepped Outboard, a huge gay and lesbian snowboarding organization. It sponsored Miller, leading to a new phase in the snowboarder’s career. He became the company’s spokesperson and was named one of the Advocate’s “100 Most Influential Gays and Lesbians” in 2001.

“If I’m a big pro and I have international companies sponsoring me, am I going to be willing to risk losing millions of dollars just to be myself, or is it worth it to just keep it in the closet for a few more years?” wonders Miller, who insists that the choice for athletes to come out publicly is personal, not political. “Sometimes it’s a choice between losing your dream and being who you are or achieving your dream and denying who you are.”

Miller pushed even harder to try out for the US Olympic team in 2002 and 2006, but training injuries made him fall short. “I lost the cartilage in my right knee and it had to be cloned, and that took me out for two years. I realized after seven surgeries on the same knee, an ankle surgery and a broken back that I needed to take care of myself,” says Miller.

Miller, now retired from pro snowboarding, works in corporate IT and oversees daily events operations for Outboard.org. The site, started 15 years ago by founder Tim Gill, predates Myspace and Facebook and has more than 2,500 active bent boarders as members. Miller describes the site and its community network as “a college fraternity; you can go away for five years and come back and still know everybody.”

Outboard’s Gay and Lesbian Snowboarding Week is attended by close to 300 queers who get together every year for an intimate week of serious boarding. “Some guys say this is the only event they come to because it’s not just a big circuit party,” notes Miller. “I can go out all night and have some fun at night, but I’m up early the next day to board. Except of course the last night.” Sport aside, there are still festive events like the Ice Queen Party (cash-bar booze-fuelled indoor skating nights), Boy Soup (huge indoor hottub parties) and big shows by drag queens like the Demented Divas followed by sweaty late-night DJ dance-offs to keep the boys happy. Miller describes the event as a great place to meet guys outside of an overly packed gay vacation spot or club.

“I’m not necessarily into the whole skater, loose-baggy-pants-around-the-thighs look,” explains Miller, when asked what he finds attractive in a man. “I go for more of the technical stuff. If it’s actually a functional piece of gear a guy’s wearing, that I find attractive.” With his professional training out of the picture, Miller finally had time to start a relationship, and that’s when he met Steve. The couple dated for years and recently got married in Victoria, BC — after Steve proposed to Miller on top of a hill during an Outboard Snowboarding Week photo shoot in 2008. That memory is Miller’s personal favourite from the more than 10 years he’s attended the Outboard trip, but he titillates with a description of “200 guys crammed into an all-natural hot spring on the river on a moonlit night.” His best anecdote illustrates the newfound intersection between his gay friends and the sport he loves. “One year we snowboarded down the last run at night with just headlamps in a snow storm,” remembers Miller. “All you heard were 100 gay guys and girls just giggling, no macho BS to be found.”

GAY WINTER SPORTS TRAVEL GUIDE There are countless places you can go to get in touch with your inner ski bunny or board jock. Locally, the boys in the know are those from the Toronto Gay Ski/Snowboard Club (TGSC). They arrange trips to nearby Blue Mountain or Quebec City and Whistler. They also throw parties, dinners and beer nights at Woody’s to help members stay warm during the cold winter months. Info: www.tgsc.ca For those of you looking to discover brand new hills and brand new boys, there are lots of gay winter sports weeks in places where nobody knows your name. Here are just a few that are happening this year: Whistler’s WinterPride Gay Ski Week, Mar 1–8 Info: gaywhistler.com Steamboat Springs OUTAboundz Gay Ski Week, Mar 3–7 Info: outaboundz.org Lake Tahoe: Friends of Dorothy Personal Development Ski Retreat, Mar 5–18 Info: outandaboutravel.com/laketahoegayskiretreat.htm Lake Tahoe Winterfest Gay Ski Week, Mar 7–14 Info: laketahoewinterfest.com SWING Swiss Gay Ski Week, Mar 6–13 Info: swing-on.ch Mammoth Mountain Gay Ski Week, Mammoth Lakes, California, Mar 17–21 Info: mammothgayski.com Euro Ski Pride, Saalbach, Austria, Mar 20–27 Info: euroskipride.com European Gay Ski Week, Tignes, France, Mar 20–27 Info: europeangayskiweek.com Gay Snowhappening, Solden, Austria, Mar 20–27 Info: gaysnowhappening.com

Info: outboard.org

Matt Thomas is a fab associate editor who would love to hit the slopes with any willing homos.

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