The cover of the current Advocate features out Australian diver Matthew Mitcham with the grabbing headline, “Matthew Mitcham doesn’t want to be the next Greg Louganis (but he might not have a choice).” When I read that, I thought, “What a little punk.” But then I read the quote where the editors obviously got the headline and realized they got it wrong:

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.”

Mitcham went on in the interview to draw distinctions between Louganis the person and Mitcham the person; a sentiment that Louganis echoed.

The cover of the current Advocate features out Australian diver Matthew Mitcham with the grabbing headline, “Matthew Mitcham doesn’t want to be the next Greg Louganis (but he might not have a choice).” When I read that, I thought, “What a little punk.” But then I read the quote where the editors obviously got the headline and realized they got it wrong:

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.”

Mitcham went on in the interview to draw distinctions between Louganis the person and Mitcham the person; a sentiment that Louganis echoed.

It seems the editors just look at Louganis as a “gay diver,” not one of the great divers of all time and one of the most-revered Olympic athletes in the last 50 years. I’m also not so sure it would be some earth-shattering moment for gay athletes, either. He is a diver; we’ve seen gay divers. And if you ask your average Joe on the street, he’d probably ask you, “isn’t every male diver gay?” It certainly would be cool, but “significant”?

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