Gregory Efthimios Louganis born January 29, 1960) is an American Olympic diver, LGBT activist, and author who won gold medals at the 1984 and 1988 Summer Olympics, on both the springboard and platform. He is the only man and the second diver in Olympic history to sweep the diving events in consecutive Olympic Games. He has been called both “the greatest American diver” and “probably the greatest diver in history”.
At the 1988 Seoul Olympics, his head struck the springboard during the preliminary rounds, leading to a concussion. He completed the preliminaries despite his injury. He then earned the highest single score of the qualifying round for his next dive and repeated the dive during the finals, earning the gold medal by a margin of 25 points. In the 10 m finals, he won the gold medal, performing a 3.4 difficulty dive in his last attempt, earning 86.70 points for a total of 638.61, surpassing silver medalist Xiong Ni by only 1.14 points. His comeback earned him the title of ABC’s Wide World of Sports “Athlete of the Year” for 1988.
Six months before the 1988 Olympics, Louganis was diagnosed with HIV, and started antiretrovirals. At the time, people with HIV/AIDS faced great stigma losing their jobs, being denied housing, and being ostracized. Years later Louganis came out as HIV+. When he injured his head at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and some blood got in the pool, Louganis said he was “paralyzed with fear” that someone might catch the virus, but no-one did. The incident posed no risk to others as any blood was fully diluted by the pool water, and according to John Ward, chief of HIV-AIDS surveillance at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “chlorine kills HIV”. Also, since skin is a very effective barrier to HIV, the only way the virus could enter would be through an open wound. “If the virus just touches the skin, it is unheard of for it to cause infection: the skin has no receptors to bind HIV,” explained Anthony Fauci.
In 2016, Louganis was pictured on boxes of Wheaties cereal, where prominent American athletes are famously featured, as part of a special “Legends” series that also included 1980s Olympians Janet Evans and Edwin Moses. This occurred approximately a year after a change.org petition was launched that requested that he be featured, although General Mills denied any influence from the petition.
Picture Credit : Google
