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