Happy 66th Birthday to former Olympian Greg Louganis! Greg’s an American Olympic diver who won gold medals at the 1984 and 1988 Summer Olympics on the springboard and platform. He is the only man 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.”
Louganis is a gay rights activist, as well as an HIV awareness advocate. He has worked frequently with the Human Rights Campaign to defend the civil liberties of the LGBT community and people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS.
Six months before the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Louganis was diagnosed with HIV and started antiretrovirals. After Louganis came out publicly as HIV-positive in 1995, people in and out of the international diving community began to question Louganis’s decision not to disclose his HIV status at the time of his head injury during the 1988 Olympics, given that he had bled into a pool that others then dove into. Louganis has stated that, during the ordeal, he was “paralyzed with fear” that he would infect another competitor or the doctor who treated him. Ultimately, no one else was infected.[13] John Ward, chief of HIV-AIDS surveillance at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, noted that the incident posed no risk to others because any blood was highly diluted by the pool water and “chlorine kills HIV.”
After retiring from diving, Louganis began to compete in dog agility competitions; he has said that being around the dogs gave him “a sense of security, company and unconditional love”. His dogs have included Dr. Schivago; Captain Woof Blitzer; Nipper and son, Dobby, both champion Jack Russell terriers; Gryff (Gryffindor), a border collie; and Hedwig, a Hungarian Pumi. Nipper was named for the RCA dog, while Gryff, Dobby and Hedwig were named for Harry Potter characters, as Louganis is a self-described “huge Harry Potter fan.”
Now retired, Greg Louganis is living in Panama.
(Source: Wikipedia)
