Gay swimmers in the olympics
'I wanted to be role model' - Olympian Jervis retires
Weeks after coming out, Jervis was planning on going to Birmingham to depict Wales at his third Commonwealth Games.
He had won bronze in the men's 1500m freestyle at his first Games in 2014.
Then he won silver in the event in 2018.
He was in the form of his life and was dreaming of winning his first major senior title.
Then Covid got him and he never had chance to compete for Wales again.
"For me it felt like a grief," he admitted. "I honestly felt like I'd confused a member of my family.
"To stay on that podium and have my Welsh national anthem played for me is all you ever want as a child. When that opportunity is taken away from you, it's something that you can't really wrap your head around.
"Coming endorse from that and getting to the Paris Olympics, that for me was my gold medal.
"Because I feel fancy I really did hit rock bottom after that [in 2022] and getting up was the best thing I've ever done as an athlete and it's something I can be really proud of as an athlete."
Competitive Swimmers Who Are LGBTQ
Competitive swimming is a high profile sport in organized competitions and its successful athletes are equally high profile. So how does the LGBTQ collective fit into this sport?
Despite its image of a relatively straightforward and non-impact sport, the competitive swimming earth is individualistic with a very macho, gender-binary, testosterone-driven homophobia. This assessment can be drawn from the many autobiographies and memoirs written by out LGBTQ individuals who detail the agony they had in the closet prior to coming out. The notion of catching AIDS by swimming in the equal water as an infected individual is an infamous example of ignorance surrounding this disease in the sport. Strict bathing suit styles and locker room dynamics play a large role in the culture of the sport.
To counter this antagonistic environment, many local LGBTQ swim clubs have been formed with numerous inter-club competitive events, especially at the Masters level of challenge. The success of the Gay Games has been a big boost to LGBTQ competitive participation in the sport. The challenge for the LGBT competitor participating outside of the LGBTQ com
Mark Foster: Ex-Olympic swimmer on what he learned from coming out at 47
With that decision to finally speak publicly, the 'two Marks' had become one - and, five years on, Foster is equally comfortable talking about his sexuality as about his swimming.
It's a remarkable turnaround for a man who spent an entire professional career determined to preserve the two things apart.
So does he assess times have changed when it comes to Gay inclusion in sport, and does he wish he'd done anything differently?
"It's polar opposites to where we were when I was a kid," Foster says.
"There's a lot more people out there being themselves, which is brilliant. But then again, you spot in the news that someone is being thrashed up for being same-sex attracted, so we have a way to go.
"I don't think there's a right or wrong time for people to come out. I was 47. Accomplish I wish I was 15? Yeah, I execute, if I had my time again - but I don't.
"But I set up out that my friends were my friends.
"I always thought they wanted to hang out with me because I was 'Mark the swimmer'. But actually, they liked hanging out with me because of who I was
Ian Thorpe is unpopular with some critics, despite a largely positive reaction when he came out last weekend. The issue is money.
Stories are circulating that he was warned prior to the 2000 Olympic Games about the financial impact on the Canadian swimmer Mark Tewksbury, who came out in 1998 (six years after he won gold at 1992 Olympics) and clueless a “six-figure speaking contract”. So Thorpe stayed where he was.
When Thorpe resumed training in the hope of selection for the 2012 Olympics, his fellow swimmers allegedly demanded their governing body reveal the payment deeply interested in this comeback amid rumours of “six-figure handshakes”.
Swimming Australia was in a tight spot, with ratings drooping and prime-time TV coverage imperilled. So if payments were made, they were presumably an investment in star authority to regain media attention and boost revenues.
Much of the frenzy surrounding last Sunday’s television interview with Michael Parkinson has also been to do with dollars as Ten Network, who screened it, apparently agreed to hire Thorpe as a commentator on the Commonwealth Games as a quid pro quo.
So how unfavorably has Thorpe jeopardised sponsorship opportunities with his com