After years of public denial and a long battle with depression, Olympic champion Ian Thorpe reportedly came out gay during a television interview by veteran British interviewer Sir Michael Parkinson. The interview, which was an exclusive for Channel 10, had Parkinson commenting that his talk with the Australian athlete was one of the best ones he has done in his lengthy career, The Daily Telegraph said.
The interview was done last month and had Thorpe opening up to Parkinson about his denial about his sexuality. Thorpe, who has broken 22 world records and won a trove of awards at the Olympic Games before retiring in 2012 at the age of 24, had denied reports about him in the past about being gay despite speculation about his sexuality. Part of his campaign to conceal his true gender was by dating multiple women and writing a tell-all autobiography titled "This is Me," Buzzfeed said.
An excerpt of the book read, "For the record, I am not gay and all my sexual experiences have been straight. I'm attracted to women, I love children and aspire to have a family one day ... I know what it's like to grow up and be told what your sexuality is, then realizing that it's not the full reality. I was accused of being gay before I knew who I was."
The Australian also opened up about his entering a rehab facility to battle depression, presumably for being a closeted gay.
Thorpe's admission came at the heels of Texas GOP governor Rick Perry's support of gay conversion therapy, which was a controversial and invasive approach to purportedly making gays straight despite the fact that the US is making legal headways for same-sex couples to receive federal benefits.
Attempting to support his argument by comparing gays to alcohol addicts, he said, "Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not," he said, "you have the ability to decide not to do that. I may have the genetic coding that I'm inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that. And I look at the homosexual issue the same way."
