I was sitting in my friend’s living room, watching the 10m platform diving final, where only Australian diver Matthew Mitcham’s final plunge stood between China’s clean sweep of the diving medals. The boys I was watching the broadcast with were craned forward intently, since they had been drooling over Mitcham all evening in a game of ‘Where’s Wally’ with points being scored at the sight of Mitcham or the hot Columbian with all the tattoos.

As Mitcham poised himself for his final dive, one of the boys said, ‘I hope he doesn’t pull a Louganis,’ referring to the accident 20 some years ago when American diver Greg Louganis split his head open when it hit the board during a dive. What was intended to be merely a smart-arse comment however, was oddly pertinent, with the parallels between the two representing just how far we have and have not come in supporting diverse sexualities in elite athletics.

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Greg Louganis came out as a gay man in 1994, eight years after the head-cracking incident. In 1995, Louganis revealed in his autobiography that he was also HIV-positive. This revelation came at a time when much of the information about HIV/AIDS was still speculative and driven by fear and homophobia. Due largely to the stigmas of the day, Louganis saw his sponsorships dry up and became a pariah in the sporting world after coming out. Every company he was affiliated with except one dumped him for fear of consumer backlash at a time when the climate towards gay people was hostile at best and full of negative associations and misinformation, particularly when it came to HIV/AIDS.

Two decades later, as Matthew Mitcham stands poised and ready to dive, his is a very different story of competing as a gay elite diver from Louganis. Unlike Louganis, Matthew Mitcham did not wait eight years after his peak in sports to come out. He came out before Beijing instead, ensuring that sponsoring programs allowed his boyfriend, one of his key supporters, to attend the games. Moreover, unlike Louganis, Matthew Mitcham’s coming out has made him a poster boy and elevated his status within the sporting world.

Seemingly, times have changed, and athletes can be open about who they are and who they love without fear of losing their livelihoods or even the opportunity to represent their country… However, while the situation has certainly improved, the fact, is Matthew Mitcham is the exception and not the rule, and the same stereotypes and fears that Greg Louganis faced persist in today’s sporting world.

Matthew Mitcham was the only openly gay man to compete at the Olympics. That is not the only openly gay Australian – the only openly gay male athlete, period, full stop, end of story. While the women fared slightly better, an article on Outsports lists nine out lesbians competing in Beijing, the fact remains that of the 10,000+ total athletes in Beijing only ten were openly gay. Now what are we to believe here? That there were a disproportionately low number of gay athletes competing at the 2008 Olympics (approximately 1 in 1000)? or that the ratio of gay/straight athletes is fairly comparable to the general population (5-7%), but for some reason, the majority of these athletes are not out?

Unfortunately, I have to believe the latter. Recently, in Australia (a country, I should note, that is more progressive in its acceptance of diverse sexualities than many of the 200 or so countries represented in the Beijing Olympics), the AFL is facing a discrimination claim because a bisexual trainer was sacked after coming out. Former Victorian State Premier Jeff Kennett supported the firing as an appropriate measure to protect the young men in the care of the football club. Meanwhile, in America, TV network NBC is reported by GayWired.com as having censored coverage of Matthew Mitcham with his partner when compared to coverage of other athletes and their partners.

Professional athletes are finding themselves to be not only sportsmen and women, but brands. With the amount of money at stake in the form of very lucrative sponsorship deals, is it reasonable to surmise that this may be playing a part in the lack of visibly gay athletes? What about the national sporting bodies, the powers that be, the folks who decide where their funding goes and who takes the field to represent their country? America’s women’s soccer team has pulled athletes for bringing unflattering media attention to the team. Is it a great leap to imagine that the media attention, the questions surrounding locker room activities, the fickle nature of sponsoring corporations who are easily spooked and run away with their bag of money between their legs, would be enough to prompt these governing bodies to encourage gay athletes to keep quiet about their sexuality? Of course, this is purely speculative, but surely the number of openly gay athletes at the Beijing Olympics can’t just be a statistical anomaly. Of course, should the case be that these still waters do in fact run deep, it makes standing up there on that platform seem a little more lonely and a whole lot more impressive.

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Holly Brown