Australian diver Matthew Mitcham will make history as the first Australian to compete in the Olympics while open about his homosexuality. Olympic diver Matthew Mitcham When Mitcham, 20, balances on the Beijing diving tower this August, his partner Lachlan will be watching and cheering him on. Months out from the Games, Mitcham has revealed his sexuality to the public for the first time, in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald. The gold medal hopeful's journey has not been easy. He's battled depression, retired in his teenage years after physical and emotional burn-out, then nine months later resumed his sport and built himself into the champion he is today. "The more you have experienced, the more you have to draw off. I look at the last 20 years as a long, winding path of lessons and some hardship. I hope the rest of my life isn't straight because that could be boring," he laughs. Mitcham follows in footsteps of two other famous openly homosexual Olympians, though neither were out when they competed at the Olympics. Australian Dawn Fraser, a gold medal winning swimmer, competed in the 1960 Rome and 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Multi-gold medal winning American diver Greg Louganis, of part-Samoan ancestry, competed in the 1976 Montreal, 1984 Los Angeles (two gold medals) and 1988 Seoul Olympics. In Seoul he famously cracked his head severely on a diving board but nevertheless defended his titles to win two more golds. Soon after he came out as both gay and HIV positive. Updated 26 May, 2008: Australian Olympic cyclist Michelle Ferris, a lesbian who won silver at both the 1996 and 2000 Olympic Games, has recently come out. The Sydney Morning Herald's full interview with Matthew Mitcham is on the link below.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Saturday, 24th May 2008 - 3:07pm