Out Australian diver Matthew Mitcham failed to secure a place in the Olympic finals for the 10-meter platform dive yesterday. Mitcham, who broke Olympic records in Beijing in 2008, missed a slot by just one place.
Leaving the pool with tears in his eyes, Mitcham ranked 13th and earned 482.40 points in the semi-finals yesterday morning. He had been suffering from ongoing abdominal pains but said during the preliminaries that “it’s not an issue for me now, mentally or otherwise.”
American David Boudia and Russian Ilya Zakharov snagged gold medals at the Aquatics Centre, ending the long-running streak of Chinese divers winning top honors in the event.
While we’re sad Mitcham won’t be fulfilling his Twitter promise to dive naked off the 10-meter platform if he earned a gold medal, he’s still a consummate athlete and role model in our book.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Fortunately, he’s spoken about his plans to compete in the next Summer Olympics in Rio. Sounds like the perfect place for him to give us a gold-medal dive in his birthday suit.
Davygee
Matthew is a champion still, for being unapologically out and proud from the beginning, for picking himself up when things were bad and winning a gold in Beijing and for caring so much about his fans. He’ll always be a winner !
Michael
I say he does the naked dive anyway– it’ll be a healing experience… for us all.
ned
He was totally screwed over by what I saw. It seems some of the judges did not want a gay athlete to take the gold again. Instead, we got the obnoxious Bible-thumper Boudia. What a farce.
Analog
He did great and he’ll always be an inspiration.
Well done, Matthew.
We’re proud of you and all you’ve achieved (and will undoubtedly go on to achieve)!!
xxx
Sohobod
He was a star.
Next time.
realgay
He didn’t seem like he wanted to compete. He’s been that way for two years now. He’s been injuried for that time and I think after winning gold at the Olympics his drive lessened But let’s be honest Matthew had the diving competition of his life at the 2008 Olympics. Only China has produced consistent champions. Every non-Chinese diver since Greg Louganis has not been able to stay at the top for long.
David Boudia can marry a woman and say he’s straight forever, he’s still gay regardless. I’m pretty sure Nick McCrory and Tom Daly are gay too.
Mark
@Sohobod: He IS a star.
Clay
If you haven’t already, I highly recommend creeping his youtube channel. The man plays the ukelele and has a very soft singing voice. #HeartSwooned
I won't grow up
He is a true champion in more ways than one. He was really over judged by the officials.They don’t like out athletes.
VERN DUFFORD
DAMN…we love ya!
MP
As a consolation prize he still gets to be beautiful and have the respect of tons of people. I loved the little film NBC did of him and I didn’t think it was possible, but it made me love him more.
JT
I agree with realgay. Seriously, have you listened to David Boudia talk? Also, I don’t think
Matthew M was judged any different than the other divers. There was a lot of talent there. For a while I didn’t think Tom D was going to make it either.
Greg
I really love him.
Max
As you as you are competing, Matthew, we will be supporting you till the end. No other out atheletes are this proud and lively like you. It is heartbreaking to see him in tears but we will never give up on you. #lgbtrolemodel #bitchams
Daez
@ned: Statements like this happen EVERY TIME that gays do not finish first. It is getting as common as pulling the black card. Seriously, this kind of drivel just makes us look more like professional victims than competent people that work hard to compete and can handle losing as well as winning.
ned
@Daez Oh, then why, for example, did Daley totally screw up his semi-final dive and made the finals, and Matthew’s dive was near perfect and extremely difficult – and he didn’t. I’m calling bullshit.
MP
@ned, they accumulate the scores of several dives (I believe six) for each round and NBC only showed a few, mostly the ones that were notable of those six or so. All you need is a large cumulative score to qualify for the next round, and unfortunately Matthew’s scores in the last round left him out of the running of the final twelve by only a few points. (He finished 13th if I’m not mistaken) It would have been interesting to see how he would’ve done in the finals since Boudia struggled early on but pulled out a gold, but alas.