[wtetzner]

Doesn't Python support futures?

    with ThreadPoolExecutor() as executor:
        one, two = executor.map(lambda f: f(), [callOne, callTwo])

I'm sure you could write a nicer helper function that's more similar to gather as well.

[seabrookmx]

Sure, in a web server context you'd probably want to instantiate that executor globally and re-use it, Then you could write helper functions around that. But it's still considerably more code and legwork than the async alternative, while also being slower and using more memory if you care about those things.