Sunday, August 24, 2008

The amazing Matthew Mitcham!

With the Beijing Summer Olympics now wrapped up, I'll join the chorus of congratulations for Aussie dreamboat diver and openly gay Matthew Mitcham (pictured above and below), who won the gold medal for the men's 10-meter platform final in Beijing, denying China a clean sweep of this year's diving gold medals.

The adorable, 20-year-old Mitcham was the only openly gay male athlete at this year's games (there were nine lesbians out of the closet in competition), making this upset victory all the sweeter, not only for his home country, but for openly queer athletes everywhere.

You can read more about Mitcham here, here and here. Thanks to Gay Persons of Color for the tip today on Mitcham's win.

Montreal Simon also writes eloquently about the importance of Mitcham's win to gay youth around the world. Check out his lovely post here.

While I'm at it, let me also congratulate the Canadian Olympic team for its great performance this year, taking 18 medals, their best since Atlanta in 1996.

Canadian Adam van Koeverden came back yesterday from a tough week to finally score a silver medal in the men's K-1 500-metre final.

To celebrate, here's a nice pic of him directly below because we can never see too many...lol.

1 comment:

Simon said...

Hi Matt !! Thanks for the link. It was an amazing story wasn't it? By pure luck I got to watch it live, it all came down to the last dive and it was so exciting.
I was disappointed with some of the other gay athletes, but every good example counts...