Okay, I’m a bit biased, as he’s the first (and only) Olympian who was nice enough to follow me on Twitter, but Matthew Mitcham is my new favorite diver. (What’s the matter Tom Daley? Are you scared of me or something?) Even if Mr. Mitcham didn’t extend that courtesy, I’d have been enamored of him for being one of the only Olympians to live proudly and openly as a gay man.
It seems like such a small thing, and such an insignificant thing when you’re in the running to be the single best diver in the world, but to some of us it makes a world of difference. To some, this is everything – the peek into a future of possibility and hope – the seed of an idea that this might one day be you. If you’ve had to grow up without that, you have no idea what kind of power that holds.
