Diving’s a
sport where splashes are ordinarily discouraged. But
Australian Matthew Mitcham’s decision to come out of
the closet has attracted the whole world’s
attention to this top-ranked jock’s shot at
Olympic gold.
When Matthew
Mitcham arrived at the Sydney Aquatic Centre on a cold June
day wrapped in a heavy coat and jeans (it’s winter
Down Under), it didn’t seem possible that
he’d strip down to a pair of Speedos and willingly
dive into water again and again. The Olympic Games were two
months away, and the 20-year-old diver with a pierced
tongue was (and still is) dead-set on beating his
rivals and winning the gold.
He did just that
May 11 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., at the AT&T USA
Diving Grand Prix, one of the major annual meets put on by
FINA, the international governing body for swimming,
diving, and water polo. There, at an outdoor pool in
windy conditions, Mitcham won the 10-meter platform,
his specialty, defeating both 2004 Olympic gold medalist Hu
Jia of China and fellow Australian and 2004 silver
medalist Matthew Helm. Mitcham, currently ranked third
in the world, also beat world number 1 Sascha Klein of
Germany.
Diving is a
mercurial sport in which one small move can mean the
difference between a perfect 10 and a belly flop -- success
depends almost as much on chance as it does skill. But
in Beijing, if Mitcham nails his dives -- they include
a forward 3½-somersault pike and an incredibly
difficult backward three-somersault tuck performed from an
arm stand -- he could very well see the Australian
flag raised above him. (He also competes in the
three-meter springboard event, but less successfully:
He didn’t finish in the top six in Fort Lauderdale,
and his world ranking is 10.)
Should he win,
Mitcham will join the very small club of openly gay
Olympic gold medalists.
But as
significant as that moment would be for gay athletes
everywhere, Mitcham has only one goal in mind.
“I just want to be known as the Australian
diver who did really well at the Olympics,” he says.
“It’s everybody else who thinks
it’s special when homosexuality and elite sport
go together.”
Aquatic athletes
are as revered in Australia as NFL stars are in the
United States, so the news that Mitcham is gay made
headlines throughout his home country. It was The
Sydney Morning Herald that broke the story; in
the course of profiling the diver as part of its
Olympics coverage, a reporter from the paper asked Mitcham
whom he lived with.
“I
hadn’t planned to do it at all,” Mitcham says
today. “It was just a question” -- which
he answered by saying he lived with his partner of two
years, Lachlan -- “and it went from there.”
The subsequent
attention turned out to be a bit of a distraction for
Mitcham, who was hunkered down for pre-Olympic training when
the story ran in The Herald May 24. He received
so many media requests that his coach had to set aside
a morning for interviews and photo shoots a couple
weeks later. But by 2 p.m. Mitcham had to be back on
the diving platform. It was the only access the press has
had to the diver since he came out because, as he
explains, he needs to concentrate on training and
“not worry about what I’m going to
say.”
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