Olympic Sportswomen

Courtney Yamada, 26
A Games Ambassador, Courtney is ranked 2nd in the U.S. and 15th in the world in the skeleton. In this sport, athletes sprint out of a gate then shoot down an icy track on their stomachs on tiny sleds as fast as 80 mph, steering with the subtle movements of their bodies. Courtney grew up in Idaho, where she was bred for speed-her father was a member of the U.S. National Ski Team and had her on skis as soon as she could walk. She switched to the skeleton four years ago and rose to the top, only narrowly missing a spot at Torino in 2006. Now, she is focused passionately on making it to Vancouver in 2010, training and living full-time at the USOC training centers in Lake Placid, New York and Chula Vista, California. Courtney is 1/4? Japanese, 1?4 Italian, 1/2 Danish, part titanium (a nasty collision on a run left her with a plate and five screws in her collarbone) and 100% heart. There is no skeleton at the Gay Games, but you may catch her throwing a fierce game of darts. You can track Courtney’s progress and support her training at courtneyyamada.com.

<!--break-->Leigh-Ann Naidoo, 29
Leigh-Ann, the first African Gay Games Ambassador, and a member of the first African Olympic beach volleyball team, grew up in apartheid-era South Africa. Born in Cape Town in the mid 1970s, as race riots gripped Soweto, Leigh-Ann was classified as a colored (mixed race) person under the system of racial segregation. She learned about the fight against apartheid and racism through the non-racial sporting movement—her father started the first integrated volleyball organization. She was a senior in high school when South Africa held its first non-racial democratic elections, and international sports competitions finally desegregated. Leigh-Ann formed a beach volleyball duo with Julia Willand which they dubbed the "Sisters of Africa." They launched their own fundraising campaign and competed in two seasons on the FIVB world tour, placing as high as 5th at an FIVB tournament in Italy in 2004 before finishing 19th at the 2004 Atlanta Olympics. She will be a spectator at the Gay Games as she recovers from a torn knee ligament, hoping to soon return to competition. In the meantime, Leigh-Ann is working on her Masters degree in sport sociology/history at the Universtity of Western Cape, doing local activist work and coaching elite women's volleyball.

Saskia Webber, 34
During her