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"My name is Greg Louganis, I am gay and I am HIV positive": the inspiring story of the Olympic champion who faced the world

2020-05-14T18:23:18.976Z


The American, who suffered bullying, suffered from substance abuse, several suicide attempts and an extortionist representative, knew how to overcome the dangers of becoming a world star too soon.


The May issue is now available in PDF format, and is downloadable for free by clicking here.

"My name is Greg Louganis. I am gay and I am HIV positive. ” This is how Gregory Efthimios Louganis (San Diego, United States, 1960), the best jumper of all time, presented himself to the media and a handful of students in 1995. It happened after the publication of his autobiographical book Breaking the Surface,co-written with essayist Eric Marcus. In it, the athlete dared to tell his story seven years after the accident he suffered at the Seoul Olympics where, due to a miscalculation, he hit his head on the trampoline with the consequent bleeding. During those years, Louganis was obsessed with the obsessive shadow of responsibility: when that mishap occurred, he had already contracted HIV. He knew it and fell silent. And although the International Olympic Committee quickly stepped up exonerating him of any kind of guilt (as published by EL PAÍS in 1995), he began to question the ethics of his behavior.

At nine months old, Greg was put up for adoption. His parents were only 15 years old and they found in Peter and Frances Louganis the perfect family for the little one. While his mother and sister were for Louganis the greatest consolation, with his father the relationship swung between love and hate

This episode was but the penultimate link in a sports career that seems to have been written by the most dramatic of Hollywood screenwriters. Although perhaps the high number of athletes with a tragic story in the background is no more than the obvious reflection that elite sport often has to do with brutal abuse and inhuman demands on many occasions. "Since I worked on the autobiographies with Greg and later with Rudy Galindo, a US figure skating champion, I no longer see the Olympics or figure skating the same way," says essayist Eric Marcus. "I know too much about the terrible lives of elite athletes. What we do to them, at least here in the US, reaches the level of abuse. I find it awful. Most elite athletes retire young from their sports because their bodies fail at a young age. And then they realize that they are practically unprepared to live a normal life. "

Louganis' story has all the ingredients of an athlete who starts too early and quickly becomes a world star (family problems, bullying, early mishaps with substances of all kinds, suicide attempts and an extortion representative) with one added: that of Being homosexual in a time when homophobia was at ease in the world of sports. “When Greg was competing there were no LGTBQI Olympic athletes who had come out of the closet. Being perceived as gay, Greg became the target of open hostility from other jumpers. One of the things he feared when he decided to admit that he was gay and had AIDS was that his fans would turn their backs on him. However, it was just the opposite, which was very encouraging. But some of the media showed some hysteria over the misperception that Greg had put athletes and medical personnel in danger of exposure to HIV by hitting his head with the trampoline. In any case, it should be remembered that, although not in all sports, the situation is still terrible for LGBTQ athletes who compete in the elite, ”admits ICON Marcus.

Greg Louganis competing in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Photo: Getty

At nine months old, Greg was put up for adoption. His parents of Samoan and Swedish descent were only 15 years old and found in the marriage of Peter and Frances Louganis, who had already adopted an older daughter, the perfect family for the little one. While his adoptive mother and sister were always the greatest consolation to Louganis, with his distant father the relationship swung between love and hate. His father only became interested in him when he realized that the boy had an unusual talent for stunts. And, as in so many similar cases, interest became the worst of nightmares. Authoritarian and demanding, his father pushed him too far. That feeling of helplessness would spread outside the home domain.

The school was also not a safer place. Because of his skin color, he earned all kinds of racist insults; because of his dyslexia (which would be diagnosed only much later) he was branded as 'retarded' forcing him to imagine escapism strategies ("at school I always hated reading in front of other people because I made many mistakes. So I took the book home , I memorized some paragraphs and then volunteered to read those specific paragraphs "), and because of his fondness for pirouettes and dance, he was repeatedly described as effeminate by the high school cocks. All these obstacles led Louganis to enter the troubled worlds of alcohol and drugs at a very young age, even trying to kill himself on more than one occasion.

Before the Seoul accident, Louganis had already starred in gruesome chapters. Since the death of the jumper Sergei Chalibashvili, of whom Louganis felt indirectly guilty for the alleged help to Sergei Nemtsanov to desert, passing through the absence of sponsors for the rumors of his homosexuality

However, his jumping prowess was indisputable. According to the documentary Back on board: Greg Lougani s (2014) of HBO directed by Cheryl Furjanic, for Sammy Lee, its discoverer and first coach, Louganis was "winning horse". He had that ability that only the chosen ones have: “He is capable of creating the illusion that what he does does not require effort at all,” explains Ron O'Brien in the documentary, the man who would lead him to success. The trampoline was the only place where Louganis was perfect, unreachable, and unbeatable. He was not motivated to compete, he just wanted to jump. “I was not interested in competition. I was interested in acting, ”he declared in an interview with the Harvard Business Review. Perhaps that is why he chose the most solitary of sports, one in which to be alone in front of the void seeking perfection. "It is a very solitary sport," says O'Brien in the documentary. "You are there, with your tiny swimsuit and you cannot say: 'The ball has gone bad for me.' All up to you".

It is a sport in which the only reference is a coach who orders and guards every minute of a life in which the only thing that counts is something that becomes, as O'Brien rightly points out, the “obsessive persecution of a dream". Louganis once confessed to always traveling with a Speedo in his bag because you never know when the opportunity to get on a board to train will arise. “When I was working with Greg, I thought about how lucky I was not to be an elite athlete. Greg and I are about the same age and when we were writing the book, I was in the middle of my career and with many opportunities ahead. Greg was already retired and expected to die sooner than later. But even when it was clear that he was going to live, he faced a path full of challenges. The only thing he was trained for from an early age was not something he could continue to do for the rest of his life. It lacked the life skills that normal people acquire when they grow up, ”says Marcus.

Before the spectacular crash in Seoul, Louganis' career had already starred in gruesome chapters. Since the death of the Soviet jumper Sergei Chalibashvili for which Louganis felt indirectly guilty (the Soviet was forced to equal Louganis by making a jump from an extreme danger that, at that time, only the American did) to the alleged aid to the also Soviet jumper Sergei Nemtsanov to desert (which earned Louganis the nickname 'fag communist'), including the absence of sponsors for rumors of his homosexuality.

Greg Louganis (left) in 1988 with his manager and partner Jim Babbit. Photo: Getty

Every year, Wheaties cereal brought out special boxes with the legends of the sport. Edwin Moses, Carl Lewis, Evelyn Ashford and a host of others passed through that cardboard. All except Louganis, who would not do it until 2016. But if Louganis stood out for something, it is because he is the living example (like Nadia Comaneci) of perfection. He was the first to agree on seven judges to score him with two tens and the only one to treasure four Olympic gold medals obtained in two consecutive Games (Los Angeles 1984 and Seoul 1988, in the two possible modalities: springboard and platform). All this despite being one of the victims of the American boycott of the Moscow Games in 1980 in which he was expected to harvest gold.

Shame and silence

A few months before going to the Seoul Olympics, Jim Babbitt, Louganis' partner and manager, discovers that he has AIDS. Louganis is immediately tested. Test positive. He does not know what to do. Seoul is just around the corner. They strongly advise him to stay trained: if he doesn't go to the Games, the rest of the team won't be able to either. Probably, the growing climate of homophobia unleashed by the first waves of AIDS discouraged publicizing the disease. It was the year 87 and, according to the documentary Back on board: Greg Louganis , in those years it was not uncommon to see gloved policemen to stop gay protesters or read news that one in seven respondents were in favor of tattoo those affected by AIDS. 

Greg Louganis with the two gold medals he won at the 1984 Olympics. Photo: Getty

The only possible way for the athlete at that time was to remain silent. And the only solution to go down that silent and heavy road was a medicine called AZT. A terribly aggressive medication of which little was known but that managed to keep Louganis in the competition in exchange for not being able to sleep more than four hours in a row. In that physical and mental state, Louganis performs in Seoul. And then the only thing that could not and did not happen happened. In the first jump Louganis hits his head on the board. Something that is not without danger if we take into account that the dive speed can be greater than 50 km / hour. Louganis comes out of the pool. Confident and with a pool of bleeding behind. You can only think of your responsibility, the doctor who sews you without surgical gloves and the traces of blood left in the pool and on the deck. Still, Louganis faces what he knew would be the last leap of his career. "It is over," he repeated to himself. And then Louganis rises once more and gets the jump that would give him his second gold medal in those Games.

Claiming that the Chinese were on his heels, the jumper announced his withdrawal in 1989. But the worst is yet to come. Until then, Louganis - like so many other athletes too focused on their sporting successes, their brands, their training and their competitions - had been unconcerned with accounts that Babbitt managed as he pleased, and that he had defrauded large amounts of money. When he realized it, Louganis was practically broke and unable to get rid of the cause of his bankruptcy. Babbitt threatened to tell his whole story if he was stripped of the role of manager and administrator. But in 1989 Louganis gets a restraining order (not surprising considering Babbitt raped Louganis at knifepoint). The manager died a year later of HIV.

In 1994 Louganis decides to write his biography. Why right at that moment? In 1993, the jumper was scared: he was losing weight very quickly and thought he had little time left. Greg and I were introduced by a mutual friend. When we first met, Greg was depressed and sad. I had reason to be! He wanted to tell his story in his own words before he died. He had AIDS and in 1993 the prognosis was terrible. His life expectancy was short and we started a crazy race to finish the book so that he could be alive when it was published. What he wanted to achieve was a complete account of his existence that he had kept secret. What surprised me during our more than sixty hours of interviews and conversations was how Greg shared his experiences with little effect. He had little perspective of some of the horrible things he had been through and the extraordinaryness of his accomplishments at the 1988 Olympics. He won two gold medals while taking high doses of AZT, a powerful drug with significant side effects, including deterioration. her balance, which probably contributed to her hitting her head. I think my reactions, including the tears, helped him put his life into perspective, ”says Marcus.

Greg Louganis with husband Johnny Chaillot in 2016. Photo: Getty

When Louganis is asked when he came out of the closet in the Harvard Business Review interview, he replies: “It depends on who you ask. I went to the University of Miami, far from where I grew up, and in the theater department, I met other gays. With my mother, I came out of the closet in '83. So for my friends and family it was no secret, but my policy was not to talk about my personal life with the media. " It is in 1995, with the release of Breaking the Surface , when Louganis tells the world "My name is Greg Louganis, I am gay and I am HIV positive." The book sold out within half an hour of going on sale. Despite the courage, there were those who wanted to take advantage of the troubled river. This was the case of Larry King, who cornered Louganis in his late show on CNN, asking him over and over again how it is possible for an intelligent boy to get HIV.

After all of this, it took years for Louganis to become a mentor to the American jumping team for the Olympics. Mentor, not coach. Because Louganis, victim as it was of that endemic disease of elite athletes to go out into the world without tools, insists on preparing athletes for what will come next, for their life after the jumps and not to continue to increase the history of smashed Olympic heroes.

As of today, Louganis is happily married to Johnny Chaillot, he has left behind his financial problems (he had to sell many of his belongings, including Olympic medals, to keep his home), he has become a stubborn activist and continues to be the best Jumper in history with marks that have not yet been beaten. "Greg is still the same charming, kind and gentle person I met more than 25 years ago," Marcus told ICON. "Back then I was very depressed. I think he has worked hard to get to a place where his apparent serenity reflects inner peace. ”

The May issue is now available in PDF format, and is downloadable for free by clicking here.

You can follow ICON on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or subscribe to the Newsletter here.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2020-05-14

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