Four Olympic medals for Australia and still in the closet, until ...

Just after he turned 21, Australian swimmer, Daniel Kowalski, won his first three Olympic medals in swimming at the 1996 Atlanta games. He won an Olympic gold at the Sydney 2000 games for a relay event when he was 25.

Ten years later, in April 2010 Daniel Kowalski announced that he is gay. Kowalski says he was inspired to come out by Welsh rugby player Gareth Thomas, who announced the previous December that he was gay. He said "I felt really compelled to do it because it's very tough to live a closeted existence". From Wikipedia (29.01.12) As we saw in another posting in this blog, it doesn't matter how spectacular your closet is, it's still not a great place to be.

He wrote this great little essay for the Sydney Morning Herald (April 18, 2010) where they even provide his email address. The picture at the top comes from our beloved Band of Thebes site.  In 2010, Kowalski was selected by readers of samesame.com.au as one of the 25 most influential gay Australians. I wonder if the conductor, Paul Dyer, was another of them.

I don't read anywhere that he has a partner.