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Why Matt's the only gay in the Olympic village

Last August, I switched on to watch the diving finals from Beijing’s Water Cube to see if 14 year old Tom Daley could make history. Of course he was too far behind to make a move on the medal positions, but he was, by his own admission, completely upstaged by Australian Matthew Mitcham, Going into the final dive, Mitcham was thought to be too far behind Chinese diver Zhou Luxin to take gold, yet he pulled off a back two-and-a-half piked somersault with two-and-a-half twist, officially the world’s most difficult dive, to win, with four perfect 10 scores. Mitcham was the only diver from outside China to win gold.

You would have thought that superstardom in sports-mad Australia would be assured for the handsome 21 year old from Queensland, yet since his return he has been offered only one relatively small sponsorship deal – with Aussie telecoms company Telstra. Matthew thinks he knows why this is – in June 2008, he came out as gay. Mitcham is the only male Olympic athlete to come out as gay whilst competing, although 10 ‘out’ lesbians did compete in Beijing – in tennis, football and handball. One of them, Mitcham’s fellow Australian, tennis player Rennae Stubbs, said on coming out in 2006:

‘”I always say to my friends, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if everybody who was gay said they were?’ If we said February 21, or whatever, this is the coming out day. So, if you are, you have to come out to everybody you know.It would be phenomenal. And it would be nice if everybody could just accept that it’s not a choice, this is who you are.

“I don’t hide who I am any more. Everyone in the tennis world pretty much knows who’s gay and who’s not. The only reason I would like it spoken about publicly more is that I wish everybody would realise that, ‘See all those people you admire? Out of 10 of them, four are gay, and I just want you to know that your child can still idolise them’.”

I’d argue with the 4/10 theory, but not the rest. But apart from lesbian tennis players, there’s a distinct shortage of out sportsmen and women, all the more so whilst they are still actively involved in professional sport. When John Amaechi, the British basketball player who made his name playing in the NBA for Utah Jazz, came out after retiring, he was clear that he could not have done so when he was still playing. He said:

‘It demonstrates a naivety and lack of empathy to think I could have done it as an active player. Pro sports are a business. They’re about winning. Anything that leads to a distraction from that winning is a negative.’

The comments of his former team-mates varied hugely, as you might expect in a country with every viewpoint from West Coast ultra-liberals, to evangelical hellfire Christians. One former team-mate, Troy Hudson, said: ‘The majority of people in pro sports – I mean, in the world – don’t feel comfortable with that kind of person around. Especially in a masculine sports where they’re always touching each other and in the showers.’But another, Tracy McGrady, took the opposite perspective. ‘I’m the type of dude who don’t give a ****. You could be the most flaming guy on earth and kiss your boyfriend after games as long as you don’t try it with me. I just want to win. Everything else is just a bunch of crap.’

Amaechi is clear that he is not alone. “It’s an absolute nonsense to think that” he said. “I don’t know if it’s a sizable minority. I really don’t know that. But this I do know. It’s important to know that there are players out there in soccer, in American football, in baseball, in all the sports, that people love, admire, embrace and hero-worship who are gay. That is just a fact. And I include Britain in that statement“.

So why no out gay players amongst our sporting heroes? When gay and lesbian entertainers, politicians and businessmen seem ten a penny? Probably because the environment surrounding professional football is so macho, despite all that kissing and hugging after a goal. And of course there is the fear factor, the worry that one of your team-mates might be eyeing you up in the shower, touching you up in the changing room. Certainly revealing that you were gay as an 18 year old would be sporting suicide. Would Cristiano Ronaldo or Theo Walcott have survived their first season as Premiership rookies if they had announced that they were gay? I doubt it. The only chance a footballer has is to be successful first and then confirm his sexuality.

There is one profssional player in the most macho of sports who has come out mid-career and survived. Step forward Ian Roberts, Aussie hardman, who found the rugby league world more supportive than he might have dared hope. But even Roberts had to wait until he’d signed his big contracts and made his name. So what would happen if Gerrard, Henry, Rooney or even the great gay icon Beckham came out as gay? For surely that is the only way that we will ever tackle homophobia in football. Tellingly after all the years of Kick Racism out of Football, it took until 2005 for the FA to address homophobia in the game and two further years for homophobic chants to be outlawed.

Black footballers may now be pretty well universally accepted, but Paul Ince was the nearest we got to a top black manager. It took many years for black footballers to be accepted for something they could not hide if they wanted to. How much easier is it for gay footballers to keep their private lives very, very private?

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