Matthew Mitcham

Matthew Mitcham born 2 March 1988

Matthew Mitcham, OAM is an Australian diver. He is the 2008 Olympic champion in the 10m platform, having received the highest single-dive score in Olympic history. He is the first Australian male to win an Olympic gold medal in diving since Dick Eve at the 1924 Summer Olympics, and one of few openly gay athletes at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Mitcham was born in Brisbane but lives and trains in Sydney.

Mitcham originally competed as a trampoline gymnast. He was discovered by a coach at the Australian Institute of Sport Diving Program, while at the Chandler Aquatic Centre in Brisbane's suburbs, and continued with both diving and trampolining for several years.

As a trampolinist, Mitcham represented Australia at the World Junior Championships in 1999 and 2001, winning the double mini-tramp event. He also competed at the Australian Youth Olympic Festival in 2003, finishing sixth.

From 2002 through 2004, Mitcham was a national junior champion in diving, winning the events in which he competed. Mitcham competed at the 2002 World Junior Diving Championships. In 2004, he won the silver medals in the 1m, 3m synchronised, and 10m platform events at the World Junior Championships. At the 2004 Junior Nationals, he won the 1m, 3m, and 10m and 3m synchro titles. At the 2004 Olympic Trials, he placed strongly but did not qualify for the Olympic team. In 2005, Mitcham won his first senior national title.

In 2006, Mitcham started competing in senior internal diving events and Australia at the 2006 Commonwealth Games, where he competed in the 1m, 3m, and 10m events. He placed 4th in the 3m and the 3m synchro, and 5th on the 1m and 10m events.

Taking a break from the sport in 2006, he returned in 2007 and started to train under current coach Chava Sobrino at the New South Wales Institute of Sport. In 2008 Mitcham won the 1m, 3m and 10m individual events at the Australian Nationals. Later that year he won the 2008 Diving Grand Prix event in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. His prospects were looking very promising for the 2008 Olympics.

He publicly came out as gay in 2008 to the Sydney Morning Herald when they were profiling Olympic hopefuls. During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he was also featured on the cover of the international gay publication The Advocate in 2008 and 2009.

Mitcham gained media coverage as the first Australian to compete at the Olympic Games as openly gay at the time of his competition, though this was inaccurate, as Mathew Helm, who competed in the same event, was also out before the Olympics began. Other notable gay Australian Olympians include Ji Wallace, who competed at the 2000 Summer Olympics and won a silver medal in the inaugural trampoline event; however, he came out after the Games.

Mitcham represented Australia at the 2008 Summer Olympics in the 10-metre platform and the 3-metre springboard events. He placed 16th on the 3m springboard and did not qualify for the final. He qualified in second position for the semi-final and final of the 10m platform event. After experiencing mixed success in his first five dives in the final, Mitcham entered the final round of dives in second place, 34 points behind Chinese diver Zhou Lüxin. After Zhou performed his worst dive of the final, Mitcham still needed to achieve an impossibly high score to win the gold. However, his near-perfect final dive drew four perfect 10 scores from judges and achieved the highest single-dive score in Olympic history. He finished with an overall score of 537.95 to defeat Zhou, who finished with an overall score of 533.15, to win Australia's second diving medal of the Games. His win prevented China from claiming a clean-sweep of all diving gold medals at the Olympic Games.

Prior to his 10m platform win, Mitcham was reported to be one of only eleven openly gay athletes competing in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, out of 11,028 athletes from 204 countries. That he should have come out at such an early stage of his career - the relatively few international sportsmen who have come out have generally done so towards the end of their career or after they have finished competing - makes Matthew Mitcham an inspiration to others growing up gay, and to those competing sportsmen who fear the consquences of opening the closet door and stepping out.