Welsh rugby star Gareth Thomas says it’s time to tell the world: “I’m gay”

Congratulations to Welsh rugby Gareth Thomas!

He has publicly acknowledged in UK’s Daily Mail that he is gay.

He tells the paper: ‘I was like a ticking bomb. I thought I could suppress it, keep it locked away in some dark corner of myself, but I couldn’t. … It was who I was, and I just couldn’t ignore it any more. … I’d been through every emotion under the sun trying to deal with this. … You wake up one morning thinking: “I can handle it. Everything is fine,” and the next morning you don’t want anyone to see your face, because you think that if people look at you, they will know.”

The 35-year-old Thomas told his wife Jemma in the summer of 2006 and they split up. But he hoped to stay in the closet. But he began to have an emotional meltdown that November following a Wales game in Cardiff. He broke down in tears in the locker room.

A coach named Scott Johnson guessed what Thomas’s issue was and he helped the player come out to his teammates.

“I was absolutely terrified, wondering what they were going to say,” he remembered. ‘But they came in, patted me on the back and said: “We don’t care. Why didn’t you tell us before?” Two of my best mates in rugby didn’t even blink an eyelid….I felt everyone was protecting me and closing in tight around me. No one distanced themselves from me, not one single person.”