December 11, 2024 • 38 mins
Greg Louganis is often considered the greatest diver of all time. But his sports journey was intertwined with his deep desire to be loved by his parents. He relives the moment when his HIV status, sexual orientation, and diving career all collided at once: the 1988 Summer Olympics.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
the Outspoken podcast Network. Hey, it's Jordan. A tiny note.
Will be going on a two week break for the holidays,
but we'll be back on January eighth. I want to
thank you all for all of the amazing support this year,
and I can't wait to share more episodes. Here's today's show.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
And it was my thought that if I was HIV positive,
then I would pack my bags, go back to California,
lock myself in my house, and wait to die, because
that's how we thought of HIV AIDS. And so when
he came by and gave me the results that I
(00:45):
was HIV positive, I mean, it was like ringing in
my ears. I couldn't really hear anything. I thought I
was just going to pack up and go home. And
then my cousin said, you know, the healthiest thing for
you to do continue training.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
that by seeking out our history, and what I've found
are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love.
In this episode, we'll meet Greg lugainis often said to
(01:27):
be the greatest diver in the history of the world.
We'll learn about his path to becoming an Olympic gold
medalist and how that path was paved with loneliness, shame,
and ultimately triumph. From My Heart podcast, I'm Jordan and
Solves and this is what we loved. When I was
(02:10):
a kid, I wanted to be a famous opera singer.
It was actually my dream. I even went to a
special high school in Texas where I studied opera for
four years, and I was really competitive. My singing journey
began because both my parents were musicians. They would gleam
(02:30):
with pride every time I nailed a performance. I used
to get this high from all the people that would
approach me to congratulate me and my parents. In my heart,
I never really loved singing. I would get unbelievably anxious
before a performance. What I really loved was making them proud.
(02:52):
I thought a great performance could convince them that I
wasn't the disappointing sissy child everyone knew I was. I
gave up singing when I was in college and spent
a while thinking that I was a failure for letting
them down. I didn't realize until my adulthood that my
(03:13):
parents always loved me for who I was. Up until
that point, I didn't define myself by my character. I
defined myself by what I could achieve. My next guest,
Greg Luganis, has a similar story, but he wasn't a singer.
He's the greatest diver that ever lived, but just like me,
(03:35):
growing up, his hunger to be the best was driven
by a desire to be loved. Okay, so we usually
start the show off Greg by asking every single guest,
what was the moment that you knew you were gay? Yeah?
(03:57):
What was that moment for you?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I was really young when I was, I mean even
before I knew about sexuality or anything like that. I
was probably about four or five. You know, I knew
I was different. What that meant, I didn't know. I
just knew that I was just this odd kid. And
I didn't put sexuality to it until I was in
(04:22):
my early teens. Actually, it was my first Olympic Games
in Montreal nineteen seventy six. I came out to somebody
who I would who I thought would be sympathetic and all.
And then when I told him that I thought I
was gay. He wouldn't be in the same room with me,
(04:43):
he'd avoid me. He made sure that people were around
when we were together. It's like, oh my god, this
is not cool. The message that I got in my
head was that, yeah, being gay is not not a
good thing.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
And you were a teenager at that point.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Yeah, I was sixteen. Wow, I was sixteen.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
And when did you first get into diving?
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Well, okay, so I started in dance and acrobatics when
I was year and a half, and I was performing
on stage when I was three and I sang dance
with me and did a tap number, and so then
shortly after that, I got a partner, and then we
couldn't compete in talent contests until I turned six, so
we would do all of these performances and recitals, convalescent homes, parades,
(05:33):
country fairs, that sort of thing. So then by the
time we started competing, we were like winning everything. When
I was twelve, there was this huge talent contest in
San Diego and just you know, people came from everywhere
and my partner and I won sweepstakes, and also my
(05:53):
partner I think I was like six or seven years
old and she went into gymnastics and I followed her
into gymnastics. Gymnastics was my first love. That's where I thought, oh,
I want to make the Olympic team in gymnastics. But
when I was twelve thirteen, I had osny slaughters, which
is water on the knee and it's very common for young,
(06:16):
super super physically active children. And so my doctor said
that I had to quit the dance and acrobatics because
we were on cement performing on cement, and that I
had to quit gymnastics. But I could continue diving because
you're landing in water and it doesn't have that impact.
So once I quit everything and focused all of that
(06:39):
energy into one discipline, my diving crew just took off.
I mean I was world champion for my age group
when I was thirteen. Three years later, I was on
my first Olympic team. So that was kind of my path.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
And you were adopted as a baby. I wonder what
that was like for you growing up.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
You know, that's a whole thing. Because your podcast is
all about shame. That was the biggest shame that I
felt I had to look at to identify because my
mother was sixteen when she had me, and so I
was born into shame.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
And the other thing too was that her family was
quite racist, and so because of my father being someone
they knew I would be darker skinned, there was a
lot of shame while going into even my existence. And
(07:44):
I felt shame that I existed because I ruined this
young girl's life.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Your birth mother, my birth mother. Yeah, and you have
spoken openly about your relationship with your dad, and I
wonder if you could tell us a little bit about
that and how it sort of shaped you.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
So the dad that I was raised with, he was
Greek and we were raised Greek, and so with dad,
I always felt judged by him. I felt that in
order for me to be able to be loved and
worthy of love, you know, I had to be the best.
(08:27):
So a lot of my diving kind of came from that,
that desperation. It's a very desperate place to come from.
It's not real healthy. And I always felt that that
dad was judging me.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Did he know or suspect from a young age that
you might be gay? Do you think that's why he
sort of maybe treated you differently.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
I think that he had his own struggles, you know,
which is really interesting, So I think that dad was
dealing with his own issues for himself.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
You had mentioned earlier, Greg that you sort of wanted
to be the best that you could be, sort of
to win over the love of your parents, which is
an experience I think so many queer people have and
share with one another. Was that what was sort of
(09:23):
driving a lot of this competitive spirit and sort of
wanting to be the best and when within diving at
that age.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
So when I was really young, I felt like a
throwaway child.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
You know.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
I was like, oh, if my mother could throw me away,
then anybody could. So I had to be deserving of love.
And how was I going to be able to deserve that?
And I didn't really have academics because when I first
started school, I stuttered, so I was in speech therapy.
I had difficulty reading. Later I learned that I'm dyslexic.
(10:00):
I could show people that I could dance, I could dive,
I could do these these things and get attention. So
that was how I felt that I was going to
be deserving of being loved.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Was there a moment when you knew that you were
going to be a star diver at that age?
Speaker 2 (10:22):
You know, it's funny because I never thought I was
good enough. Really yeah, I never thought I was good enough.
It wasn't until I was at the World Championships in
nineteen eighty two. I was twenty two, and by then
I had already been a world champion. I won the
Pan American Games, the World Championships, so I was diving last.
(10:44):
I won the prelims, and so Alexander Portnoff from the
Soviet Union was introduced as Olympic gold medalist nineteen eighty
and then I was introduced Greg Lugannis from the United
States of America Olympic silver medalist nineteen seventy six, and
I was thinking in my head, you're the gold medalist
because I wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
In nineteen eighty Greg was the favorite to win gold
at the Moscow Summer Olympics, but the United States decided
to boycott the games in protest of the Soviet Union.
Greg wasn't able to compete, and his Soviet rival Alexander
portnov won instead. The next chance to compete against him
was at the World Aquatic Championships in Ecuador two years later.
(11:29):
Greg was determined to win.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
And so I always wanted my performance to speak for itself.
I didn't want to have to speak for my performance,
and so I just kind of took that on that
I had something to prove. And then, as it turned out,
it was beautiful day in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and I was
just going along in the competition. Everything was going really great,
(11:55):
and then came down to the last dive and I
checked the score to make sure that it was the
correct dive number, and it was the correct dive number,
but my score was still flashing on the board, which
meant I had already won. Wow, I didn't have to
do my last dive to be world champion. And so
(12:20):
that's when I felt like I stepped into that I
belonged there, I belong on the world stage. I'm worthy
of being there. And so that was when that switch
happened for me as far as recognizing that, yeah, I'm
(12:42):
one of the best in the world.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
And sort of at the same time, Greg, you've been
pretty open about having started with drinking and drugs that
around that time are a little bit earlier. Tell me
about that and what was sort of driving that.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Well, A lot of it was in order to fit in,
you know, to fit in with the po heads all
you got to do is smoke pot, you know, and
so that was an easy way to get into this group.
I was just searching for connection.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
What you're saying is you were searching for a sense
of belonging. Yeah. Yeah. Were you lonely at that age.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Yeah, yeah. I recognize that more now in retrospect, that
I was just searching for connection.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Growing up as a lonely child. Greg enjoyed diving because
at first he thought if he was the best diver,
perhaps his father would love him. But later it was
his relationship with his coach that made him stay. Although
the world didn't know he was gay, his coach did,
and he accepted him and loved him for it. But
(14:04):
rumors about his sexuality began swirling, and in the mid eighties,
being openly gay was not popular. America was going through
a conservative renaissance, and aids, the deadly disease that no
one wanted, was particularly associated with the gay community. Even
though Greg had won gold medals in the nineteen eighty
(14:24):
four Los Angeles Olympics and was already considered the greatest
diver in the world, he never got the famous Wheaties
box or nearly as many sponsorships as his Olympic counterparts
in the eighties. You win two gold medals at the
Los Angeles Olympic Games, but you were pretty underrepresented in
(14:45):
terms of sponsorships, especially compared to some of the other
athletes in track and gymnastics that were getting multiple high
profile sponsorships. Why do you think you weren't being true?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Did the same, Yeah, I mean, it was rumored about
my sexuality. It was just my policy not to discuss
my personal life with members of the media. And actually
at that time, the members of the media respected that
there was plenty to read between the lines. You could
figure it out, but it was just my policy not
to discuss my personal life with members of the media.
(15:22):
And so, yeah, rumors, they definitely get get in the
way of the potential. And also, I mean there's morals
clauses in your contracts and morals clauses.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Yeah yeah, wow yeah. And so basically what you're saying is,
at that time, you were rumored to be gay, and
that was seen by the public as immoral, and these
brands didn't want to align themselves with someone that was
quote immoral for being gay, right, yeah wow, Yeah. How
(15:58):
did that kind of make you feel at that age
when you knew that, well, damn it, I'm one of
the best athletes in the world, you know.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
My pursuit and diving, it wasn't I was always trying
to prove myself. So I never kind of got stuck
and like, oh look what I did, you know, because
it was always about Okay, what can you do now?
So that's where my focus was. You're only as good
(16:30):
as your last competition. Yeah, and there's always another competition
on the horizon. I'm not competitive. I'm not competitive, and
people go, you win all these metals, you have to
be competitive. No. I was a performer. It was always
about the performance, and if anybody came to me, I
(16:51):
was really shy. But if anybody came to me and
asked for help, I mean I'd help them beat me
because I knew if I could elevate their level of performance,
it would elevate mine. So it was never about competition.
(17:12):
It was always about performance. And that's the reason why
my coach, Ron O'Brien, he got that. He understood it's
all for me. It was about the performance.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Was your coach kind of one of the only people
in your life at that time that you felt really
saw you and loved you.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Him and my mom. Wow, my mom was incredible. My
first Junior Olympic Nationals, I wasn't diving as well as
I knew I was capable of. I had I think,
three more dives for the finals. And I told her
I didn't want to go back to the pool, and
she said, okay, that's fine. Wow, and she was sincere
(17:54):
we didn't have to go back to the pool. And
so then I thought, well, I'm already kind of committed,
so you know, I just have three three dives, and
she said, okay, you have to make me a promise
when you get on the board, smile. And so my
first dive, I'm get on the board, they announced the dive,
(18:16):
I set the fulk rum and I looked towards my
mom and she's pointing at the sides of her mouth,
you know, you know, raising her you know, making a smile,
and it just made me laugh. And so I went
from wherever I was, you know, twelfth or whatever, I
ended up tying for second place. Wow, with my last
(18:37):
three dives. So with my mom, I knew that I
didn't have to dive, you know, she just wanted me
to have fun and Greg in.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
The eighties, right before the nineteen eighty eight Olympic Games,
you were diagnosed with HIV. I wonder if you take
me to that moment when you were diagnosed. This is
at a time when AIDS debts are climbing every year,
stigma around the virus is at an all time high,
(19:12):
and you are on track to literally become one of
the world's greatest athletes in the next games. What was
going through your mind during that diagnosis.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
I was having some problems with my ear, you know,
ear infection or something. And then I went into the
doctor and I said, oh, by the way, I'd like
to do an HIV test anonymously.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
And I'm guessing this is in the midst of like
some pretty intense training for the games that are coming up.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Right, And so I knew it was an important year.
And so my doctor, who was my cousin, I said,
you know, I want to do an HIV test. And
I said, oh, you have nothing to worry about, you know,
and all that, and I said, no, I just would
rather know. And it was my I thought that if
I was HIV positive, then I would pack my bags,
(20:06):
go back to California, lock myself in my house and
wait to die, because that's how we thought of HIV AIDS.
And so when he came by and gave me the
results that I was HIV positive, I mean, it was
like ringing in my ears. I couldn't really hear anything,
(20:27):
I wasn't really absorbing anything, and I was thinking, oh
my god, I got to pack up because I don't
want to waste my coach's time. I don't want to
waste my teammates' time.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
You're thinking about everybody else.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Yeah, yeah, I thought I was just going to pack
up and go home. And then my cousin said, you know,
the healthiest thing for you to do is continue training,
and he wanted to treat me very aggressively. So we
met with Anthony Fauci and he made AZT available to
me because was the only drug that was available for
(21:02):
treatment at that time.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
After years of AIDS being a death sentence, a bright
spot appeared. The FDA approved its very first drug to
treat HIV. It was an old cancer drug from the
sixties that never quite served its original purpose, but researchers
twenty years later got some promising evidence that it could
maybe fight HIV. This was exciting and Being that Greg
(21:28):
had a national profile, he got access to the coveted drugs.
Little did he know, little did anyone know, that AZT
wasn't effective. The virus would quickly adapt to AZT, mutate
and replicate, but the patient would be left with serious
side effects. AZT caused heart problems and weight loss, muscle fatigue,
(21:51):
and depletion of the bone marrow, and in some patients
it ended up accelerating AIDS, but at the time it
was the only hope for survival. Greg had officially started
his training for the nineteen eighty eight Olympics in Seoul
and officially started taking AZT.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
I learned that one of the side effects of AZT
was it depletes your testosterone. And I remember, and I
didn't equate it to the AZT. I just thought, you know,
this is a natural process. I was literally crawling from
(22:30):
my bed in the morning to the bath to pour
myself the hottest bath so that I could just soak
and function, touch my toes and walk. I thought I
was overtraining, you know, because the Chinese had caught up
to me and I was pushing myself really hard. I
just assumed that I was overtraining. I didn't realize that
(22:54):
it could have been the AZT, and it most likely was.
And so I and I've watched the videotapes of my
performance in eighty eight versus just a year before, and
I can see the difference. I wasn't jumping as high,
I wasn't spinning as fast. So I mean, it's almost like,
(23:18):
you know, ignorance is bliss, you know, Like when I
was diagnosed dyslexic, I was like, I'm glad I didn't know,
because then it would be an excuse to not try
as hard. Same thing with the AZT. Had I known,
it would have given me an excuse not to perform.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Wow. Right, And the other piece of this greg is
that nobody knew your HIV status. Right.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
They couldn't. They couldn't because there was a travel band
at that time. Because I was trying to get Ryan White,
the young boy from Indiana who contracted HIV through clotting factor.
He was a hemophiliac. I was trying to get him
to Seoul to share my Olympic experience with him because
(24:08):
he was a friend of mine, and they wouldn't allow
him into the country because of his HIV status.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Because there was a travel ban, so I knew about that,
and then now knowing about my HIV status, you know,
I wouldn't have been able to travel to Soul, Korea.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
In nineteen eighty eight, Greg traveled to Seoul to compete
in the Summer Olympic Games and defend his gold medal status,
but in one of his first dives, he miscalculated his
jump and famously hit his head on the diving board
and felt blood. In a single moment, he was faced
with the decision to out himself not only as a
(24:52):
gay man, but as a gay man living with HIV.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
I took off the board. I knew I was going
to be close, so then I bring my arms when
I come out of the dive. My arms are very
close to my body, so my hands wouldn't hit because
that's usually what hits. And then I heard this big
hollow thud and I go crashing into the water. I'm like,
what the how was that? And I realized, oh my god,
that was my head And so I mean it took
(25:20):
a minute to figure that out. When you get an
injury like that, it doesn't bleed right away. But yeah,
there was no blood in the pool. It wasn't until
I got out of the pool. I was holding my
head and I walked over to my coach and we
were making our way into this office space for treatment.
And that's when he saw a trickle of blood coming
(25:43):
down and he pushed it back into my hairline when
I had dark hair, because he didn't want the Chinese
to know that I bled red.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
So he knew your coach knew my coach.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Knew about my HIV status. But he was the only
one on the pool deck who did.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
I wonder what was going through your mind when you
hit the water and you knew that you had hit
your head and there was sort of now all of
this commotion around this and you saw the blood trickle
down or you felt it from your head. What was
going through your mind at that time?
Speaker 2 (26:18):
My first emotion that I felt was I was embarrassed.
I was thinking, Okay, how do I get out of
this pool without anybody seeing me? Because the whole world
is watching, right. But I grabbed my head and then
I made my way to my coach, Run O'Brien, and
I'm thinking, Okay, what's my responsibility, what's my responsibility? What
(26:38):
should I do?
Speaker 1 (26:39):
I was paralyzed by fear.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
It was very challenging. I thought I was totally out
of the contest because I saw some zero's up there
on the scoreboard. Just figured that, oh, I'm out of
the running. And then my coach run O'Brian asked somebody
to check the standings, and I think they ran out to.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
The scoreboard, his score.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Table, and he came back and said he's in fifth.
I was in fifth place and I had two more
dives and my coach ron said, well, what do you
want to do? And I, it was kind of a
knee jerk response, said, you know, we've worked too long
and hard to get here. I don't want to give
(27:22):
up without a fight. So then the doctors tended to
my head. You know, I got six stitches. They said,
well we can, we can numb it up, but that's
going to take longer. I said, no, just sew it. Wow,
you know, So they sewed my head up, and then
I was walking with with my coach. He said, come on,
let's let's take a walk. And he said, look, Greg,
(27:46):
I know after that your confidence has shattered, and I
know that you don't believe in yourself, but I want
you to believe in me because I believe in you.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
I want to just go back for a second. Greg,
when you said that there was a fear there, what
was the fear that you were contending with? Deep down?
Speaker 2 (28:11):
The fear was more what is my responsibility in this situation?
You don't want to keep information that you have from
somebody that can affect anything they do, right, So that
was kind of what I was kind of toying with
in my mind.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
And after the injury, you executed two perfect dives and
then win two gold medals.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah, five or better?
Speaker 1 (28:43):
You will make it into the finals. Yes, And I'm
wondering what was it like being on the podium, receiving
that and knowing everything that you had been through.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
There's a much bigger picture because my coach, Ron O'Brien
and I had been through so much. While we were
at the Olympic trials, his son in law committed suicide,
and then while we were at the Olympic Games, his
mother had a stroke and fell into a coma. She
(29:30):
actually died during the Olympics. So he didn't know if
he was staying or going to be going home to
take care of affairs. So there was a lot going on,
you know. My whole HIV story was there as well.
We got our Olympic rings. You know, after all the competition,
(29:54):
we had a team dinner and all the divers would
go up and share with their experience was in soul
and I received my ring and I turned to Ron
directly and I said, nobody will ever know what we've
(30:15):
just been through. And I honestly believed that, because I
thought I would be dead, I was going to take
this to the grave.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Your HIV status, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
He coached me the last ten years of my diving career.
There was so much love, trust and faith in each other.
You know, I'm a firm believer. You don't achieve greatness
on your own. There's always somebody there, and for me
at that moment in time, it was my coach.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
When we come back. After Greg wins gold at the Olympics,
he begins dying because of AIDS. At the nineteen eighty
eight Olympics, Greg all the odds and one gold twice,
but even being one of the greatest athletes to ever live,
(31:07):
he wasn't immune from the fatal effects of AIDS. By
the early nineties, it had become clear that there were
still no effective treatments for HIV once rippling and bulging
with the muscles of an Olympian Greg Like so many
AIDS patients looked like a skeleton because of wasting, a
symptom of AIDS where body weight would rapidly drop because
(31:29):
of fever, diarrhea, and weakness. After the Olympics were over,
was there a point where your HIV began to progress
and you thought that you might die. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
I'm not much for surprises. I'm not crazy about surprises.
But my thirty third birthday, I was wasting, you know,
I was losing weight. We couldn't figure out what was
going on. We didn't know and say I gave my
address book to my then partner and my mom and said, naked,
(32:06):
throw me a surprise birthday party. The surprise was going
to be I didn't know who was going to show up,
but I thought I was saying goodbye to everybody. After that,
I did go to Florida, checked myself into the hospital
under an assumed name. I was prepared to die. I
(32:26):
wasn't prepared to live.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Wow. In nineteen ninety five, you revealed your HIV status
to Barbara Walters and to the world and Oprah yes,
and Noprah, what did that feel like for you? It
was terrifying.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
I was working with a therapist and we really hadn't
talked about talking about HIV in the public. And on
the eve of the Barbara Walters interview, I was supposed
to have an appointment and I showed up to my
appointment and there was a note on his door saying
to call his associate, you know, if this is an emergency.
(33:09):
I just figured he got tied up doing something else.
And then I got a call from my editor, Mitchell Ivers,
and he said my therapist passed away. And I was
I mean, I was numb. I didn't know what to do.
So when I showed up to the interview, Barbara could
(33:32):
sense that there was something going on, and so she said, Greg,
what's going on? And I told her that my therapist
just passed and she just threw her arms around me
and just held me and said, we'll get through this together.
M You know, that was just yeah, that was really
(33:54):
really challenging.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Wow, and that is the context or you also revealing
your HIV status to the world too, right? And what
was that like?
Speaker 2 (34:08):
I knew that it was the next step on my
journey because I felt like I was living on an
island with barely a phone for communication to the outside world.
You know, secrets isolate you, and so I thought in
my mind, I was sharing all my weaknesses. I started
I was dyslexic, I'm gay, I'm HIV positive, I was
(34:32):
in an abusive relationship, all of these things that I
perceived as being weak or damaged. And I realized by
sharing my perceived weaknesses, I was actually sharing my strength.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
And was it a relief for you to then have
this secret be out in the open that you weren't
hiding anymore or expending energy hiding anymore? Right?
Speaker 2 (35:00):
And that's exactly right. You're expending that energy to keep
a secret, whereas being authentic is really empowering, you know,
it's energizing. But when you have secrets, what did I
tell this and what did I tell that one? I mean,
it is exhausting. And so yeah, I mean it was very,
(35:24):
very freeing. One of the phrases that kept coming to
me the truth shall set you free, and so that was, yeah,
that was that was pretty powerful.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
You know, Greg, it kind of feels like all of
the elements of your life, your childhood, your relationship, with
your dad, your sexuality, your HIV status. They all kind
of intersect and interweave in ways with your sport diving,
(35:57):
and I wonder what did and diving and being a
part of that, and how all of those identities and moments,
what did it teach you about yourself?
Speaker 2 (36:09):
I think what it taught me is the importance of people.
It's about connection. My connection was with my coach, Ron O'Brien.
That was more important than the sport and sports just
a sport.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
In all of my reporting, Greg, what I've learned is
that what people continuously say over and over again is
that shame, the opposite of shame is belonging, and exactly
what you said, it's connection, it's community, it's relationships. And
(36:46):
I wonder have you found that. We started this story
off kind of talking about how you spent a large
portion of your early life seeking that out, and I
wonder if you have found that.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
I'm working on it because really in a healthy way,
and you have to start with yourself. You have to
love yourself because then that allows you to have the
love to give. You're not going to find love outside
of yourself if you're looking outside of yourself for love.
(37:24):
Or to be loved, then you'll be disappointed every time.
You really have to start with yourself. So that's something
that I'm really really working on.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
What We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolves. New
episodes drop every Wednesday. A tiny note will be going
on a two week break for the holidays, but we'll
be back on January eighth. If you want to write
in to tell your story, email us at but we
Love at gmail dot com, or you can send me
a message on Instagram or TikTok at your underscore gooin
(38:06):
solve this. We are a production of The Outspoken Podcast
Network and iHeart Podcasts. But We Loved was originally developed
with Pushkin Industries. Our producers are Joey pat Emily Meronoff,
and Christina Loranger. Our executive producers are Me, Maya Howard
and Katrina Norvil. Original music by Steve Boone. Special thanks
(38:28):
to Jay Brunson and Roquel Willis. If you loved this episode,
leave us a rating and follow us on Apple Podcasts
and Spotify, and thank you for listening. I'll see you
next week.
But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
the Outspoken podcast Network. Hey, it's Jordan. A tiny note.
Will be going on a two week break for the holidays,
but we'll be back on January eighth. I want to
thank you all for all of the amazing support this year,
and I can't wait to share more episodes. Here's today's show.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
And it was my thought that if I was HIV positive,
then I would pack my bags, go back to California,
lock myself in my house, and wait to die, because
that's how we thought of HIV AIDS. And so when
he came by and gave me the results that I
(00:45):
was HIV positive, I mean, it was like ringing in
my ears. I couldn't really hear anything. I thought I
was just going to pack up and go home. And
then my cousin said, you know, the healthiest thing for
you to do continue training.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
that by seeking out our history, and what I've found
are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love.
In this episode, we'll meet Greg lugainis often said to
(01:27):
be the greatest diver in the history of the world.
We'll learn about his path to becoming an Olympic gold
medalist and how that path was paved with loneliness, shame,
and ultimately triumph. From My Heart podcast, I'm Jordan and
Solves and this is what we loved. When I was
(02:10):
a kid, I wanted to be a famous opera singer.
It was actually my dream. I even went to a
special high school in Texas where I studied opera for
four years, and I was really competitive. My singing journey
began because both my parents were musicians. They would gleam
(02:30):
with pride every time I nailed a performance. I used
to get this high from all the people that would
approach me to congratulate me and my parents. In my heart,
I never really loved singing. I would get unbelievably anxious
before a performance. What I really loved was making them proud.
(02:52):
I thought a great performance could convince them that I
wasn't the disappointing sissy child everyone knew I was. I
gave up singing when I was in college and spent
a while thinking that I was a failure for letting
them down. I didn't realize until my adulthood that my
(03:13):
parents always loved me for who I was. Up until
that point, I didn't define myself by my character. I
defined myself by what I could achieve. My next guest,
Greg Luganis, has a similar story, but he wasn't a singer.
He's the greatest diver that ever lived, but just like me,
(03:35):
growing up, his hunger to be the best was driven
by a desire to be loved. Okay, so we usually
start the show off Greg by asking every single guest,
what was the moment that you knew you were gay? Yeah?
(03:57):
What was that moment for you?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I was really young when I was, I mean even
before I knew about sexuality or anything like that. I
was probably about four or five. You know, I knew
I was different. What that meant, I didn't know. I
just knew that I was just this odd kid. And
I didn't put sexuality to it until I was in
(04:22):
my early teens. Actually, it was my first Olympic Games
in Montreal nineteen seventy six. I came out to somebody
who I would who I thought would be sympathetic and all.
And then when I told him that I thought I
was gay. He wouldn't be in the same room with me,
(04:43):
he'd avoid me. He made sure that people were around
when we were together. It's like, oh my god, this
is not cool. The message that I got in my
head was that, yeah, being gay is not not a
good thing.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
And you were a teenager at that point.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Yeah, I was sixteen. Wow, I was sixteen.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
And when did you first get into diving?
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Well, okay, so I started in dance and acrobatics when
I was year and a half, and I was performing
on stage when I was three and I sang dance
with me and did a tap number, and so then
shortly after that, I got a partner, and then we
couldn't compete in talent contests until I turned six, so
we would do all of these performances and recitals, convalescent homes, parades,
(05:33):
country fairs, that sort of thing. So then by the
time we started competing, we were like winning everything. When
I was twelve, there was this huge talent contest in
San Diego and just you know, people came from everywhere
and my partner and I won sweepstakes, and also my
(05:53):
partner I think I was like six or seven years
old and she went into gymnastics and I followed her
into gymnastics. Gymnastics was my first love. That's where I thought, oh,
I want to make the Olympic team in gymnastics. But
when I was twelve thirteen, I had osny slaughters, which
is water on the knee and it's very common for young,
(06:16):
super super physically active children. And so my doctor said
that I had to quit the dance and acrobatics because
we were on cement performing on cement, and that I
had to quit gymnastics. But I could continue diving because
you're landing in water and it doesn't have that impact.
So once I quit everything and focused all of that
(06:39):
energy into one discipline, my diving crew just took off.
I mean I was world champion for my age group
when I was thirteen. Three years later, I was on
my first Olympic team. So that was kind of my path.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
And you were adopted as a baby. I wonder what
that was like for you growing up.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
You know, that's a whole thing. Because your podcast is
all about shame. That was the biggest shame that I
felt I had to look at to identify because my
mother was sixteen when she had me, and so I
was born into shame.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
And the other thing too was that her family was
quite racist, and so because of my father being someone
they knew I would be darker skinned, there was a
lot of shame while going into even my existence. And
(07:44):
I felt shame that I existed because I ruined this
young girl's life.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Your birth mother, my birth mother. Yeah, and you have
spoken openly about your relationship with your dad, and I
wonder if you could tell us a little bit about
that and how it sort of shaped you.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
So the dad that I was raised with, he was
Greek and we were raised Greek, and so with dad,
I always felt judged by him. I felt that in
order for me to be able to be loved and
worthy of love, you know, I had to be the best.
(08:27):
So a lot of my diving kind of came from that,
that desperation. It's a very desperate place to come from.
It's not real healthy. And I always felt that that
dad was judging me.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Did he know or suspect from a young age that
you might be gay? Do you think that's why he
sort of maybe treated you differently.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
I think that he had his own struggles, you know,
which is really interesting, So I think that dad was
dealing with his own issues for himself.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
You had mentioned earlier, Greg that you sort of wanted
to be the best that you could be, sort of
to win over the love of your parents, which is
an experience I think so many queer people have and
share with one another. Was that what was sort of
(09:23):
driving a lot of this competitive spirit and sort of
wanting to be the best and when within diving at
that age.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
So when I was really young, I felt like a
throwaway child.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
You know.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
I was like, oh, if my mother could throw me away,
then anybody could. So I had to be deserving of love.
And how was I going to be able to deserve that?
And I didn't really have academics because when I first
started school, I stuttered, so I was in speech therapy.
I had difficulty reading. Later I learned that I'm dyslexic.
(10:00):
I could show people that I could dance, I could dive,
I could do these these things and get attention. So
that was how I felt that I was going to
be deserving of being loved.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Was there a moment when you knew that you were
going to be a star diver at that age?
Speaker 2 (10:22):
You know, it's funny because I never thought I was
good enough. Really yeah, I never thought I was good enough.
It wasn't until I was at the World Championships in
nineteen eighty two. I was twenty two, and by then
I had already been a world champion. I won the
Pan American Games, the World Championships, so I was diving last.
(10:44):
I won the prelims, and so Alexander Portnoff from the
Soviet Union was introduced as Olympic gold medalist nineteen eighty
and then I was introduced Greg Lugannis from the United
States of America Olympic silver medalist nineteen seventy six, and
I was thinking in my head, you're the gold medalist
because I wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
In nineteen eighty Greg was the favorite to win gold
at the Moscow Summer Olympics, but the United States decided
to boycott the games in protest of the Soviet Union.
Greg wasn't able to compete, and his Soviet rival Alexander
portnov won instead. The next chance to compete against him
was at the World Aquatic Championships in Ecuador two years later.
(11:29):
Greg was determined to win.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
And so I always wanted my performance to speak for itself.
I didn't want to have to speak for my performance,
and so I just kind of took that on that
I had something to prove. And then, as it turned out,
it was beautiful day in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and I was
just going along in the competition. Everything was going really great,
(11:55):
and then came down to the last dive and I
checked the score to make sure that it was the
correct dive number, and it was the correct dive number,
but my score was still flashing on the board, which
meant I had already won. Wow, I didn't have to
do my last dive to be world champion. And so
(12:20):
that's when I felt like I stepped into that I
belonged there, I belong on the world stage. I'm worthy
of being there. And so that was when that switch
happened for me as far as recognizing that, yeah, I'm
(12:42):
one of the best in the world.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
And sort of at the same time, Greg, you've been
pretty open about having started with drinking and drugs that
around that time are a little bit earlier. Tell me
about that and what was sort of driving that.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Well, A lot of it was in order to fit in,
you know, to fit in with the po heads all
you got to do is smoke pot, you know, and
so that was an easy way to get into this group.
I was just searching for connection.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
What you're saying is you were searching for a sense
of belonging. Yeah. Yeah. Were you lonely at that age.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Yeah, yeah. I recognize that more now in retrospect, that
I was just searching for connection.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Growing up as a lonely child. Greg enjoyed diving because
at first he thought if he was the best diver,
perhaps his father would love him. But later it was
his relationship with his coach that made him stay. Although
the world didn't know he was gay, his coach did,
and he accepted him and loved him for it. But
(14:04):
rumors about his sexuality began swirling, and in the mid eighties,
being openly gay was not popular. America was going through
a conservative renaissance, and aids, the deadly disease that no
one wanted, was particularly associated with the gay community. Even
though Greg had won gold medals in the nineteen eighty
(14:24):
four Los Angeles Olympics and was already considered the greatest
diver in the world, he never got the famous Wheaties
box or nearly as many sponsorships as his Olympic counterparts
in the eighties. You win two gold medals at the
Los Angeles Olympic Games, but you were pretty underrepresented in
(14:45):
terms of sponsorships, especially compared to some of the other
athletes in track and gymnastics that were getting multiple high
profile sponsorships. Why do you think you weren't being true?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Did the same, Yeah, I mean, it was rumored about
my sexuality. It was just my policy not to discuss
my personal life with members of the media. And actually
at that time, the members of the media respected that
there was plenty to read between the lines. You could
figure it out, but it was just my policy not
to discuss my personal life with members of the media.
(15:22):
And so, yeah, rumors, they definitely get get in the
way of the potential. And also, I mean there's morals
clauses in your contracts and morals clauses.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Yeah yeah, wow yeah. And so basically what you're saying is,
at that time, you were rumored to be gay, and
that was seen by the public as immoral, and these
brands didn't want to align themselves with someone that was
quote immoral for being gay, right, yeah wow, Yeah. How
(15:58):
did that kind of make you feel at that age
when you knew that, well, damn it, I'm one of
the best athletes in the world, you know.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
My pursuit and diving, it wasn't I was always trying
to prove myself. So I never kind of got stuck
and like, oh look what I did, you know, because
it was always about Okay, what can you do now?
So that's where my focus was. You're only as good
(16:30):
as your last competition. Yeah, and there's always another competition
on the horizon. I'm not competitive. I'm not competitive, and
people go, you win all these metals, you have to
be competitive. No. I was a performer. It was always
about the performance, and if anybody came to me, I
(16:51):
was really shy. But if anybody came to me and
asked for help, I mean I'd help them beat me
because I knew if I could elevate their level of performance,
it would elevate mine. So it was never about competition.
(17:12):
It was always about performance. And that's the reason why
my coach, Ron O'Brien, he got that. He understood it's
all for me. It was about the performance.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Was your coach kind of one of the only people
in your life at that time that you felt really
saw you and loved you.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Him and my mom. Wow, my mom was incredible. My
first Junior Olympic Nationals, I wasn't diving as well as
I knew I was capable of. I had I think,
three more dives for the finals. And I told her
I didn't want to go back to the pool, and
she said, okay, that's fine. Wow, and she was sincere
(17:54):
we didn't have to go back to the pool. And
so then I thought, well, I'm already kind of committed,
so you know, I just have three three dives, and
she said, okay, you have to make me a promise
when you get on the board, smile. And so my
first dive, I'm get on the board, they announced the dive,
(18:16):
I set the fulk rum and I looked towards my
mom and she's pointing at the sides of her mouth,
you know, you know, raising her you know, making a smile,
and it just made me laugh. And so I went
from wherever I was, you know, twelfth or whatever, I
ended up tying for second place. Wow, with my last
(18:37):
three dives. So with my mom, I knew that I
didn't have to dive, you know, she just wanted me
to have fun and Greg in.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
The eighties, right before the nineteen eighty eight Olympic Games,
you were diagnosed with HIV. I wonder if you take
me to that moment when you were diagnosed. This is
at a time when AIDS debts are climbing every year,
stigma around the virus is at an all time high,
(19:12):
and you are on track to literally become one of
the world's greatest athletes in the next games. What was
going through your mind during that diagnosis.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
I was having some problems with my ear, you know,
ear infection or something. And then I went into the
doctor and I said, oh, by the way, I'd like
to do an HIV test anonymously.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
And I'm guessing this is in the midst of like
some pretty intense training for the games that are coming up.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Right, And so I knew it was an important year.
And so my doctor, who was my cousin, I said,
you know, I want to do an HIV test. And
I said, oh, you have nothing to worry about, you know,
and all that, and I said, no, I just would
rather know. And it was my I thought that if
I was HIV positive, then I would pack my bags,
(20:06):
go back to California, lock myself in my house and
wait to die, because that's how we thought of HIV AIDS.
And so when he came by and gave me the
results that I was HIV positive, I mean, it was
like ringing in my ears. I couldn't really hear anything,
(20:27):
I wasn't really absorbing anything, and I was thinking, oh
my god, I got to pack up because I don't
want to waste my coach's time. I don't want to
waste my teammates' time.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
You're thinking about everybody else.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Yeah, yeah, I thought I was just going to pack
up and go home. And then my cousin said, you know,
the healthiest thing for you to do is continue training,
and he wanted to treat me very aggressively. So we
met with Anthony Fauci and he made AZT available to
me because was the only drug that was available for
(21:02):
treatment at that time.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
After years of AIDS being a death sentence, a bright
spot appeared. The FDA approved its very first drug to
treat HIV. It was an old cancer drug from the
sixties that never quite served its original purpose, but researchers
twenty years later got some promising evidence that it could
maybe fight HIV. This was exciting and Being that Greg
(21:28):
had a national profile, he got access to the coveted drugs.
Little did he know, little did anyone know, that AZT
wasn't effective. The virus would quickly adapt to AZT, mutate
and replicate, but the patient would be left with serious
side effects. AZT caused heart problems and weight loss, muscle fatigue,
(21:51):
and depletion of the bone marrow, and in some patients
it ended up accelerating AIDS, but at the time it
was the only hope for survival. Greg had officially started
his training for the nineteen eighty eight Olympics in Seoul
and officially started taking AZT.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
I learned that one of the side effects of AZT
was it depletes your testosterone. And I remember, and I
didn't equate it to the AZT. I just thought, you know,
this is a natural process. I was literally crawling from
(22:30):
my bed in the morning to the bath to pour
myself the hottest bath so that I could just soak
and function, touch my toes and walk. I thought I
was overtraining, you know, because the Chinese had caught up
to me and I was pushing myself really hard. I
just assumed that I was overtraining. I didn't realize that
(22:54):
it could have been the AZT, and it most likely was.
And so I and I've watched the videotapes of my
performance in eighty eight versus just a year before, and
I can see the difference. I wasn't jumping as high,
I wasn't spinning as fast. So I mean, it's almost like,
(23:18):
you know, ignorance is bliss, you know, Like when I
was diagnosed dyslexic, I was like, I'm glad I didn't know,
because then it would be an excuse to not try
as hard. Same thing with the AZT. Had I known,
it would have given me an excuse not to perform.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Wow. Right, And the other piece of this greg is
that nobody knew your HIV status. Right.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
They couldn't. They couldn't because there was a travel band
at that time. Because I was trying to get Ryan White,
the young boy from Indiana who contracted HIV through clotting factor.
He was a hemophiliac. I was trying to get him
to Seoul to share my Olympic experience with him because
(24:08):
he was a friend of mine, and they wouldn't allow
him into the country because of his HIV status.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Because there was a travel ban, so I knew about that,
and then now knowing about my HIV status, you know,
I wouldn't have been able to travel to Soul, Korea.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
In nineteen eighty eight, Greg traveled to Seoul to compete
in the Summer Olympic Games and defend his gold medal status,
but in one of his first dives, he miscalculated his
jump and famously hit his head on the diving board
and felt blood. In a single moment, he was faced
with the decision to out himself not only as a
(24:52):
gay man, but as a gay man living with HIV.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
I took off the board. I knew I was going
to be close, so then I bring my arms when
I come out of the dive. My arms are very
close to my body, so my hands wouldn't hit because
that's usually what hits. And then I heard this big
hollow thud and I go crashing into the water. I'm like,
what the how was that? And I realized, oh my god,
that was my head And so I mean it took
(25:20):
a minute to figure that out. When you get an
injury like that, it doesn't bleed right away. But yeah,
there was no blood in the pool. It wasn't until
I got out of the pool. I was holding my
head and I walked over to my coach and we
were making our way into this office space for treatment.
And that's when he saw a trickle of blood coming
(25:43):
down and he pushed it back into my hairline when
I had dark hair, because he didn't want the Chinese
to know that I bled red.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
So he knew your coach knew my coach.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Knew about my HIV status. But he was the only
one on the pool deck who did.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
I wonder what was going through your mind when you
hit the water and you knew that you had hit
your head and there was sort of now all of
this commotion around this and you saw the blood trickle
down or you felt it from your head. What was
going through your mind at that time?
Speaker 2 (26:18):
My first emotion that I felt was I was embarrassed.
I was thinking, Okay, how do I get out of
this pool without anybody seeing me? Because the whole world
is watching, right. But I grabbed my head and then
I made my way to my coach, Run O'Brien, and
I'm thinking, Okay, what's my responsibility, what's my responsibility? What
(26:38):
should I do?
Speaker 1 (26:39):
I was paralyzed by fear.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
It was very challenging. I thought I was totally out
of the contest because I saw some zero's up there
on the scoreboard. Just figured that, oh, I'm out of
the running. And then my coach run O'Brian asked somebody
to check the standings, and I think they ran out to.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
The scoreboard, his score.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Table, and he came back and said he's in fifth.
I was in fifth place and I had two more
dives and my coach ron said, well, what do you
want to do? And I, it was kind of a
knee jerk response, said, you know, we've worked too long
and hard to get here. I don't want to give
(27:22):
up without a fight. So then the doctors tended to
my head. You know, I got six stitches. They said,
well we can, we can numb it up, but that's
going to take longer. I said, no, just sew it. Wow,
you know, So they sewed my head up, and then
I was walking with with my coach. He said, come on,
let's let's take a walk. And he said, look, Greg,
(27:46):
I know after that your confidence has shattered, and I
know that you don't believe in yourself, but I want
you to believe in me because I believe in you.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
I want to just go back for a second. Greg,
when you said that there was a fear there, what
was the fear that you were contending with? Deep down?
Speaker 2 (28:11):
The fear was more what is my responsibility in this situation?
You don't want to keep information that you have from
somebody that can affect anything they do, right, So that
was kind of what I was kind of toying with
in my mind.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
And after the injury, you executed two perfect dives and
then win two gold medals.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah, five or better?
Speaker 1 (28:43):
You will make it into the finals. Yes, And I'm
wondering what was it like being on the podium, receiving
that and knowing everything that you had been through.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
There's a much bigger picture because my coach, Ron O'Brien
and I had been through so much. While we were
at the Olympic trials, his son in law committed suicide,
and then while we were at the Olympic Games, his
mother had a stroke and fell into a coma. She
(29:30):
actually died during the Olympics. So he didn't know if
he was staying or going to be going home to
take care of affairs. So there was a lot going on,
you know. My whole HIV story was there as well.
We got our Olympic rings. You know, after all the competition,
(29:54):
we had a team dinner and all the divers would
go up and share with their experience was in soul
and I received my ring and I turned to Ron
directly and I said, nobody will ever know what we've
(30:15):
just been through. And I honestly believed that, because I
thought I would be dead, I was going to take
this to the grave.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Your HIV status, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
He coached me the last ten years of my diving career.
There was so much love, trust and faith in each other.
You know, I'm a firm believer. You don't achieve greatness
on your own. There's always somebody there, and for me
at that moment in time, it was my coach.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
When we come back. After Greg wins gold at the Olympics,
he begins dying because of AIDS. At the nineteen eighty
eight Olympics, Greg all the odds and one gold twice,
but even being one of the greatest athletes to ever live,
(31:07):
he wasn't immune from the fatal effects of AIDS. By
the early nineties, it had become clear that there were
still no effective treatments for HIV once rippling and bulging
with the muscles of an Olympian Greg Like so many
AIDS patients looked like a skeleton because of wasting, a
symptom of AIDS where body weight would rapidly drop because
(31:29):
of fever, diarrhea, and weakness. After the Olympics were over,
was there a point where your HIV began to progress
and you thought that you might die. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
I'm not much for surprises. I'm not crazy about surprises.
But my thirty third birthday, I was wasting, you know,
I was losing weight. We couldn't figure out what was
going on. We didn't know and say I gave my
address book to my then partner and my mom and said, naked,
(32:06):
throw me a surprise birthday party. The surprise was going
to be I didn't know who was going to show up,
but I thought I was saying goodbye to everybody. After that,
I did go to Florida, checked myself into the hospital
under an assumed name. I was prepared to die. I
(32:26):
wasn't prepared to live.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Wow. In nineteen ninety five, you revealed your HIV status
to Barbara Walters and to the world and Oprah yes,
and Noprah, what did that feel like for you? It
was terrifying.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
I was working with a therapist and we really hadn't
talked about talking about HIV in the public. And on
the eve of the Barbara Walters interview, I was supposed
to have an appointment and I showed up to my
appointment and there was a note on his door saying
to call his associate, you know, if this is an emergency.
(33:09):
I just figured he got tied up doing something else.
And then I got a call from my editor, Mitchell Ivers,
and he said my therapist passed away. And I was
I mean, I was numb. I didn't know what to do.
So when I showed up to the interview, Barbara could
(33:32):
sense that there was something going on, and so she said, Greg,
what's going on? And I told her that my therapist
just passed and she just threw her arms around me
and just held me and said, we'll get through this together.
M You know, that was just yeah, that was really
(33:54):
really challenging.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Wow, and that is the context or you also revealing
your HIV status to the world too, right? And what
was that like?
Speaker 2 (34:08):
I knew that it was the next step on my
journey because I felt like I was living on an
island with barely a phone for communication to the outside world.
You know, secrets isolate you, and so I thought in
my mind, I was sharing all my weaknesses. I started
I was dyslexic, I'm gay, I'm HIV positive, I was
(34:32):
in an abusive relationship, all of these things that I
perceived as being weak or damaged. And I realized by
sharing my perceived weaknesses, I was actually sharing my strength.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
And was it a relief for you to then have
this secret be out in the open that you weren't
hiding anymore or expending energy hiding anymore? Right?
Speaker 2 (35:00):
And that's exactly right. You're expending that energy to keep
a secret, whereas being authentic is really empowering, you know,
it's energizing. But when you have secrets, what did I
tell this and what did I tell that one? I mean,
it is exhausting. And so yeah, I mean it was very,
(35:24):
very freeing. One of the phrases that kept coming to
me the truth shall set you free, and so that was, yeah,
that was that was pretty powerful.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
You know, Greg, it kind of feels like all of
the elements of your life, your childhood, your relationship, with
your dad, your sexuality, your HIV status. They all kind
of intersect and interweave in ways with your sport diving,
(35:57):
and I wonder what did and diving and being a
part of that, and how all of those identities and moments,
what did it teach you about yourself?
Speaker 2 (36:09):
I think what it taught me is the importance of people.
It's about connection. My connection was with my coach, Ron O'Brien.
That was more important than the sport and sports just
a sport.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
In all of my reporting, Greg, what I've learned is
that what people continuously say over and over again is
that shame, the opposite of shame is belonging, and exactly
what you said, it's connection, it's community, it's relationships. And
(36:46):
I wonder have you found that. We started this story
off kind of talking about how you spent a large
portion of your early life seeking that out, and I
wonder if you have found that.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
I'm working on it because really in a healthy way,
and you have to start with yourself. You have to
love yourself because then that allows you to have the
love to give. You're not going to find love outside
of yourself if you're looking outside of yourself for love.
(37:24):
Or to be loved, then you'll be disappointed every time.
You really have to start with yourself. So that's something
that I'm really really working on.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
What We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolves. New
episodes drop every Wednesday. A tiny note will be going
on a two week break for the holidays, but we'll
be back on January eighth. If you want to write
in to tell your story, email us at but we
Love at gmail dot com, or you can send me
a message on Instagram or TikTok at your underscore gooin
(38:06):
solve this. We are a production of The Outspoken Podcast
Network and iHeart Podcasts. But We Loved was originally developed
with Pushkin Industries. Our producers are Joey pat Emily Meronoff,
and Christina Loranger. Our executive producers are Me, Maya Howard
and Katrina Norvil. Original music by Steve Boone. Special thanks
(38:28):
to Jay Brunson and Roquel Willis. If you loved this episode,
leave us a rating and follow us on Apple Podcasts
and Spotify, and thank you for listening. I'll see you
next week.
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