Lifestyle, Life Celebrated as Gay Games IV Nears End : New York: More than 11,000 athletes have taken part, with special tributes to HIV-positive competitors.

As Gay Games IV move toward closing ceremonies in Yankee Stadium over the weekend, the competition has been as much a display of symbolism and affirmation of life and lifestyle as a massive gathering of athletes.

More than 11,000 athletes have entered competition in 31 sports this week at 30 locations in the New York area. During some of the events, ranging from ice skating to platform diving, there have been tributes to HIV-positive competitors who have traveled here to take part in the games, which have been received with courtesy by most New Yorkers.

The games are one part of a gay festival that will culminate Sunday with a march commemorating the 25th anniversary of the June 28, 1969, uprising against police at a Greenwich Village gay bar, the Stonewall Inn. The riotous resistance to the police raid became a rallying cry for gay pride and empowerment.

The festival includes a reception honoring lesbian lawyers, lectures on heroes of the lesbian and gay civil rights movement, evenings of poetry and prose, a performance by the gay actor Sir Ian McKellen, special church services, and workshops on gay and lesbian firefighters, emergency and police workers.

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During the games “we are treated phenomenally well and with a lot of respect,” said Gene Kearon, 29, a telephone company account manager who traveled from Washington, D.C., to swim. “Strangers wish us good luck on the bus for the competitions. It’s nice to see people from all over the world--loving, hard-working professional athletes--and oh, by the way, they’re gay.”

Alongside the swimming pool at the Asphalt Green AquaCenter on Manhattan’s upper East Side, all activities stopped the other day while the names of HIV-positive athletes who had died or were unable to come to the games were read aloud.

The swimmer who read the list then announced he, too, was HIV-positive.

“I want to thank everyone for their love and support,” he continued, listing HIV-positive swimmers who had won races.

“The athletes have been incredibly polite, cooperative and making every effort,” said Tracy Sundlun, the official in charge of the track meet, which also featured straight athletes, at Randalls Island.

Some of the gay game events were carried off with a touch of panache.

At the Pink Flamingo Swimming Relay, male and female competitors wore costumes ranging from takeoffs on business suits, Scarlet O’Hara crinoline dresses, angels wings, and 1960s-style baby doll dresses.

The pace was not record-shattering. But neither the athletes, some of whom swam while drinking bottles of water, nor the spectators, who cheered wildly, seemed to care.

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Organizers predict that hundreds of thousands of gay men and lesbians will take part in Sunday’s march, which begins at the United Nations and ends with a rally in Central Park.

Speakers include Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, who is running for reelection, Democratic congressman Gerry Studds of Massachusetts, actress Liza Minnelli, and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner.

Whether New York’s Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani will address the throng was uncertain. The mayor, who interceded with the New York Yankees organization to help obtain the stadium for closing ceremonies, was booed when he spoke at the opening of Gay Games IV.

Franklin Fry, the co-chairman of the march, announced that he opposed the mayor’s presence in Central Park, charging he “does not have that good a track record.” Fry criticized the mayor for attempting to cut funding for AIDS services and abolishing the Mayor’s Office for the Lesbian and Gay Community.

Giuliani aides insisted that he would at least be marching with the demonstrators.

Also planning to be present is ACT UP, which has staged civil disobedience in the past and which wants to change the route of the march, arguing that for symbolism and accuracy it should begin in Greenwich Village, site of the Stonewall Inn and not at the United Nations.