Saturday 23 August 2008

Out, Proud, and Golden!

You don't have to be the world's biggest sports fan to have heard about Matthew Mitcham's shock gold medal win in Beijing today. The 20 year old diver from Sydney produced the highest scoring dive in Olympic history, beating favourite to win, Zhou Luxin, by almost 5 points and becoming the first Australian male gold medallist in diving since Dick Eve in 1924.

Mitcham generated a fair bit of media attention in May this year when he came out to the Sydney Morning Herald, becoming one of the first Australian athletes to do so, and astonishingly, he's the only openly gay athlete at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, compared to Athens in 2004, where 11 of the competing athletes were openly gay.

Hardly surprisingly, he got rather emotional after his near perfect dive. Well done Matthew!

More on Matthew soon...

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