Sunday 24 August 2008

Matthew Mitcham: Superchilled Superstar

I have never been as proud of an Australian athlete as I was today watching Matthew Mitcham win gold in the 10m platform diving final in Beijing. A spectacular performance made even greater given the pressure that was on him. Obviously he thrived, and made it through, beating the favourites (China) to the Gold. He's made a big point of the fact that he's an elite athlete who happens to be gay. Being gay hasn't been a huge announcement it's just been a part of who he is, which may be the case for a lot of other olympians - but none of the other men are out. So extra credit to him for not hiding, for being who he is , and for being fantastic at that. 

What a spectacular final dive. 

I hope we get to see as much of him as we have of our other winning athletes. I'm curious how they're going to portray him in the press. And how they're going to treat his partner who was sponsored to go to see him compete as they couldn't afford to pay his way.

He has his own Matthew Mitcham Website here, and is sponsored by purple.oranges - who I know nothing much about - but that I like them. 

Cheers to Superchilled's first Superchilled Superstar Matthew Mitcham (yeah loads of superlatives, but I can, it's my blog ;-) and he deserves them).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought that I had missed the finals. Since in the USA we are only now (21:30 hours/Saturday) we will not see the finals until later this evening. many of the finals have already happened when they are finally seen on TV, usually having happened twelve hours earlier. Who knows when Matthew actually won the medal

Three cheers for him!!!

Unknown said...

congrats...