Openly gay diver Matthew Mitcham wins Olympic gold medal!!!

Greetings from Denver! I'm settled in and leaving in a bit to attend some big media party. How great to flip on the computer and to see that Australian diver Matthew Mitcham, an openly gay 20 year old, produced the dive of his life last night to win the gold medal in the men's 10m platform at the Beijing Olympic diving competition.

He is the only openly gay male athlete competing in these Olympics and that is HUGE. Yes, the great Greg Louganis was gay and performed heroically as an HIV-positive athlete in 1988 (he also won two golds in 1984) but Greg was not openly gay at that time. Matthew is and he proved that being open does not mean you can't perform at your highest level,

This is just so amazing is a broader sense but also in a purely sporting sense: Matthew produced the highest scoring dive in the history of the Olympics with his sixth and final effort to become Australia's first male Olympic gold medallist in diving since Dick Eve in 1924.

Mitcham was trailing China's Zhou Luxin by more than 30 points leading into the final round, but scored a whopping 112.10 on his last dive - a back two and a half somersault with two and a half twists - to pull off an stunning upset.

"It's absolutely surreal. I never thought that this would be possible,'' he told the press after. "I wasn't even sure of my medal chances at all. After I did my last dive and I saw I was in first, I thought, "That's it, it's a silver medal, I am so happy with this' and then I won. I can't believe it, I'm so happy.

"...Everything that I did was to win an Olympic gold medal. That was my aim when I was training every single day, twice a day, 11 sessions a week, 30 hours a week, before every single dive, it was like `I want to win Olympic gold' and that made me try my hardest in every single training session for the last year and a half.

"It was all worth it.''

WELL DONE MATTHEW!!!

* PS: Thanks to the reader who pointed out that I originally posted that Greg Louganis had won his first two golds in 1964 - of course it was in 1984. Greg also won a silver medal in 1976 while still in high school..