Gay Olympic Gold Medalist Matthew Mitcham: “I wanted everyone to know who they were cheering for”

I already thought of Ausrtralian diver Matthew Mitcham as such an impressive young man. Only 22 years old, he was the only openly gay male competing in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and dramatically won the Gold Medal 10m platform diving competition with a perfect dive. After reading a new interview with Matthew in Edge, I’m just all the more impressed.

Why did he feel it was necessary to compete as an openly gay man when the pressures of competition are already so tough?

“I don’t think I would have done the Olympics without coming out because I think I would have been lying to my country by omission, by not presenting all of me,” he said. “I’m proud of who I am and I wanted everyone to know who they were going for, who they were cheering for, I wanted them to know exactly who I was and not find out later and feel like there may have been deceit. I would feel like I was deceiving if I wasn’t totally honest.”

Mitcham is now committing himself to improving the levels of participation for gay men in elite sports.

He said: “There’s a lot of discrimination, and there’s a very macho attitude with a lot of sports, so a lot of gay boys feel a little reluctant to put themselves in that situation. We might be losing some of our potential best athletes. Imagine if Greg Louganis decided not to dive because he thought he would be the victim of homophobia and discrimination. We wouldn’t have the best diver in the world, in diving history.

“I went to a gay youth event a couple of weeks ago and I said, ’Look, you can do anything – you don’t have to be afraid, you don’t have to be scared, just persist and be strong because you can be anything you want to be. Look what I did.’”