2012 Olympics: Who Are The LGBT Athletes? Day Sixteen – Carl Hester

This is the sixteenth in a series of articles profiling known out and proud Olympic athletes who are openly LGBT. The New Civil Rights Movement will publish one article each day as we move into the London 2012 Olympics.

Carl Hester, who is representing the United Kingdom in the London 2012 Olympic Team and Individual Dressage events, grew up on the tiny Island of Sark. Within this rustic 2 square mile gem of the British Empire you will find 600 people, and absolutely no cars. In Sark, the primary method of transportation is by horse. For Hester, horses are a way of life.

With this pedigree, 44-year old Hester has seen great success in the sport of Dressage. In the early 1980’s Hester left Sark and began his career in competition Dressage, seeing his first win in the 1985 National Young Riders Championship. His team won team gold at the 2011 European Dressage championships, and is poised to do very well during this, his fourth Olympic games.

Competition Dressage has long been an accepting place for LGBT athletes, and Carl Hester is no exception. He is well known and well-liked, and contributes to Dressage’s stature as a model for athletic tolerance in modern sport.

Follow our series: “2012 Olympics: Who Are The LGBT Athletes?” as we profile all the out LGBT athletes playing in the London 2012 Olympic games.

Carl Hester is on Twitter and Facebook.

 
Benjamin Phillips is a Humor Writer, Web Developer, Civics Nerd, and all around crank that spends entirely too much time shouting with deep exasperation at the television, especially whenever cable news is on. He lives in St. Louis, MO and spends most of his time staring at various LCD screens, occasionally taking walks in the park whenever his boyfriend becomes sufficiently convinced that Benjamin is becoming a reclusive hermit person. He is available for children’s parties, provided that those children are entertained by hearing a complete windbag talk for two hours about the importance of science education, or worse yet, poorly researched anecdotes PROVING that James Buchanan was totally gay. If civilization were to collapse due to zombie hoards or nuclear holocaust, Benjamin would be among the first to die as he has no useful skills of any kind. The post-apocalyptic hellscape has no real need for homosexual computer programmers who can name all the presidents in order, as well as the actors who have played all eleven incarnations of Doctor Who.