The Stanford grad took a big step toward that goal at the U.S. Men’s Qualifier on Saturday in Colorado Springs, finishing second overall out of the 72 competitors. He also tied for wins in two events: floor exercise and high bar. It was a game-changing come-back performance for Dixon, who tore his Achilles tendon last spring.

Now Dixon is talking about his personal life and sexual orientation publicly for the first time. Like charging at the vault, he’s coming at it at full speed.

Dixon and his two sisters were all adopted at birth by Michael and Kathy Dixon. While the three children were born at different times, they share the same birth mother, whom none of the family has ever met. It was through his sisters that he first discovered gymnastics.

The Dixon household was diverse: Josh is half-black and half-Japanese, while his father Michael is white and his mother Kathy is Japanese.
Maybe it was the multicultural household he grew up in, but Dixon never felt his early crushes on boys were wrong. Still, he didn’t talk about those crushes because he was immersed in gymnastics from the time he hit puberty.

“Eat, sleep, train and do homework,” was the extent of Dixon’s life. “Gymnastics was my number one priority, and if something got in the way of that I had to push it aside.”

The mantra was reflected in his interview with Outsports. When asked about gymnastics, he could rattle of incredibly detailed accounts of his scores and performances. Questions about his personal life were more of a struggle for him to answer.

The focus on his sport has paid off. In high school he was a four-time member of the USA Junior National team, placing second all-around at the 2006 Visa U.S. Championships. His Stanford team won national championships in 2009 and 2011. In his senior season he placed seventh overall at the NCAA Championships. He is a seven-time All-American. By the end of his college career he had accomplished most of what he wanted to do in sports.

All that’s left is an Olympic gold medal. On Stanford’s Web site, Dixon said his ultimate ESPN highlight would be “seeing a U.S. men’s gymnastics team win an Olympic Team Title.” He doesn’t just want to see the highlight; He wants to be part of it.

Still recovering from his Achilles injury, Dixon moved to the Olympic training center in December 2011, along with five other gymnasts. The training has paid off so far, with his strong finish on Saturday. The next hurdle for Dixon is the Visa Championships, June 7-10 in St. Louis. The top 15 finishers at that meet then go on to the Olympic Trials, June 28-July 1, in his home town of San Jose. From there, six men will be chosen to represent the United States at the London Olympics.

Even as he gets closer to his Olympic dreams, and his focus narrows more than ever on his training and competition, Dixon is ready to talk about his sexual orientation.

In his sophomore year at Stanford, one of his best friends on the gymnastics team at the University of Illinois came out to him. Dixon reciprocated the revelation; Instantly, they had a mutual support structure with another gay collegiate athlete.

When he started exploring his sexuality in his junior year, he quickly learned he wasn’t the only gay male athlete at Stanford, as he was soon dating another varsity athlete. When some members of the gymnastics team noticed Dixon was spending a lot of time with one particular friend, Dixon said they were quite comfortable bringing it up.

“Who’s this guy you’ve been hanging out with?” One of them asked.

Josh told them he was dating the other male student.

“Oh that’s cool,” was the response.

What was particularly cool to them was Josh’s willingness to share that very personal part of his life with them. Word spread quickly through the gymnastics world. “A lot of guys in the gymnastics community talk,” Dixon said.

When he arrived for training in Colorado Springs last winter, his suitemate asked Dixon if the rumors were true.

“Oh that’s cool,” was the response.

In fact, Dixon said he has not had a single negative response “in any way, shape or form.” If anything, the only homophobia he has encountered has been from within himself. He acknowledges he once felt internal pressure about being a gay man in what some label the “gay sport” of gymnastics. He didn’t want to fall into a stereotype. But he’s come to embrace it, and he says his sexual orientation now makes him stand out more at the elite level. While he stands out, he isn’t the only one. Dixon knows of at least three more gay gymnasts still competing in college, and he says he is not the only elite-level American gymnast who is gay.

One concern that remains is the judges. Gymnastics is one of only a handful of Olympic sports hand out medals based on the scores of judges. While some claimed figure skater Johnny Weir’s perceived sexual orientation hurt him with the judges in the 2010 Winter Olympics, it certainly did not play a factor when Matthew Mitcham posted the highest-scoring dive in Olympic history in 2008.

When asked about the timing of this article and how it may affect his performance in the eyes of the judges or Olympic selection committee, Dixon had no fear.

“This would never affect how I’m judged or my position on the U.S. Olympic team,” Dixon said with confidence and conviction.

The number of out male Olympians, retired or otherwise, is miniscule. Only a handful of Americans have come out publicly after their last Olympics: Most notably Greg Louganis, Johnny Weir and Tom Waddell. Only two American men we know of were ever out publicly at the Olympics: Divers David Pichler and Pattick Jeffrey. Matthew Mitcham and Johan Kenkhuis have been recent openly gay male Olympians, representing Australia and the Netherlands. There has never been a publicly out gymnast in the Olympics, male or female. Ji Wallace, the trampoline gold medalist in 2000, came out after he competed.

So what are Dixon’s chances of making history as the first out American gymnast at the Olympics? It will depend on how well he and the other gymnasts perform at these next two big meets. If his performance on Saturday was any indication, he’s got a great shot.

You can follow Josh on Twitter.

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Unfortunately, the video after the jump only has Shaw’s presenting of the deck and not the deck itself. Any Berkeley grads out there able to hack into Shaw’s computer and snag it for us? (Kidding!! No one really thinks a Berkeley grad could actually do that.)

Hat tip to The Classical.

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Thankfully the beard is gone and the buzzcut is back. A recent photo of him shows him beardless and looking hot again. Until he goes on some crazy streak and decides he can’t shave…

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While [co-president of Stanford Students for Queer Liberation Holly]Fetter has said that the environment within University locker rooms and on Stanford playing fields has been slow to change, the Athletics Department has taken some initiative. In February, the department welcomed an NCAA-sanctioned speaker to lead a cultural diversity workshop.

Senior Associate Athletics Director Earl Koberlein ‘86 said that sexual orientation in Stanford sports was “not really an issue.” In an email to The Daily, Koberlein stated that the University recruits individuals that can excel academically and athletically, regardless of sexual preference.

“Any student-athlete in need of support is encouraged to meet with Athletics Department or University staffers who can provide needed support, advice and connect them to University resources as appropriate,” he said.

It’s kind of a cop-out for the school to say they don’t need to do much proactively because “we love everyone.” Hopefully they’ll do more as other teams and athletic programs reach out proactively to gay athletes.

By the way, while I’ve been quoted in lots of publications in the past, it’s a particular thrill to be quoted in the student daily of my alma mater.

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Now that UConn’s streak is over, it gives us the chance to reflect on their accomplishment. It was amazing. To win 90 straight games is something to remember. It is a fantastic accomplishment. But all of these comparisons to the win streak of the UCLA men’s basketball team are absurd. Men’s basketball and women’s basketball are completely different sports. Heck, the UConn streak isn’t even the longest win streak in women’s college basketball history; That record stands at 131 straight games by Wayland Baptist University.

To me, the comparison between the UConn women and UCLA men does show one thing: How far behind men’s basketball women’s basketball really is. The UCLA record was set almost 40 years ago. That’s about where women’s basketball is: Four decades behind men’s basketball. It’s not the fault of any of the coaches or athletes today. Heck, the NCAA didn’t even hold a women’s basketball national championship until 1982; That was, not surprising, just over 40 years after their first men’s basketball national championship.

So kudos to the women’s basketball programs of UConn and Stanford; They have been the class of women’s basketball for the last three years. But to compare either of them to John Wooden’s UCLA teams is poppycock; Each is special in their own way.

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When anyone’s personal life is dragged through the press, it must be tough for them to stay focused on work. For an athlete it is doubly difficult, because this creates a feedback loop where a drop in form due to this distraction only serves to intensify the media pressure.

People’s prejudices come to the fore when things are going badly, not because they are valid, but because in these situations it is always easier to find a scapegoat than to solve the real problems. Any bigoted opinions of the existence of a gay player in a team could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. As the player, and thus the team, struggle under the weight of the attention, it would suddenly seem that they are a divisive and destructive presence.

Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be an easy solution. Some players are probably going to have to take it upon their shoulders to endure all this and lead the way–to inspire others that they are free to be honest and to overcome prejudices so that this career path is open to absolutely anyone with the right skills and athletic ability.

So let’s get this right. First, an athlete coming out would have trouble playing well because of all the attention (presumably negative) he would get. Funny though, many gay athletes say they feel staying closeted hindered their performance because hiding is a huge distraction. Second, Taylor seems to assume that things would go badly for the whole team after an athlete came out on the squad. How about the possibility that the team will do well? Will the gay player get the credit because he came out? Taylor doesn’t seem to consider that.

It’s disappointing to see a columnist for the daily student paper at a top-notch university paint coming out so negatively, not even considering the overwhelming evidence, both quantitative and qualitative, that says to the contrary.

Even with the media, we still have a lot of work to do.

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The halftime score of 20-12 (and Stanford was up!) doesn’t begin to demonstrate the bad play that abounded in the women’s championship game, eventually won by Connecticut. There were bad shots. Bad passes. REALLY bad lay-ups. I’ve enjoyed women’s basketball in the past, but to have this much-heralded game turn out like a junior high school game…If i was tuning in to give women’s basketball a chance, I’d tune right out again. At one point in the second half the shooting percentages: Stanford 23%, UConn 17%. In contrast to the Tennessee-Stanford game a couple years ago, this was tough to watch: The 53-47 score was the lowest combined total in the history of the NCAA title game.

At least Stanford made a game of it. But after going up 8 at halftime, they fell apart as UConn started hitting the occasional shot.

Now we have to wonder how UConn’s run stacks up amongst the greatest team athletic achievements of all time. They have won 78 games in a row, and their closest game was Tuesday’s 6-point win over Stanford. They trailed more in the second half on Tuesday than they had in the previous 77 games combined. They played 27 ranked teams in that time, winning those games by an average of 25 points. If this was a men’s team, it would be heralded as one of the greatest American sports teams of all time. Is it?

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Check out ESPN’s recap, and Tyus Edney’s famous play, after the jump.

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I took a look at the clip, and it is somewhat straightforward, although there is a word that is unclear. … My professional opinion is that during this portion, the speaker says “Fuck it, [Nigel], Fuck it.” He does not say “fucking” nor “asshole.” The middle word seems to be a name, which could be different from the one in parentheses above. Possibly the name of a player, coach, or referee, a first or last name.

None of the referees on the game had a first or last name anything like “Nigel,” and none of the Stanford players are named “Nigel.” Still, that wasn’t the part of the translation that was at issue. I didn’t want to put this issue to bed based simply on the word of someone whose reps wouldn’t return my calls, so I’m glad to finally have some closure on this.

Special thanks to Consuelo Gonzalez of lipreadingtranslation.com

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We’re looking into this further (update below) …

Hat tip to Chris Finley.

Update: Harbaugh denies he said “faggot.”

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