Sports Illustrated Senior Writer Gary Smith profiles Gareth Thomas, a Welsh national rugby player who's the only openly gay professional athlete currently on a major team sport, in their new issue. Thomas is one of the most accomplished and celebrated athletes in socially conservative Whales. Smith, who has won four National Magazine Awards, looks at how Thomas' struggled to keep his identity hidden led to binge drinking, near suicide, disguises and guilt at what he was hiding from his wife. He also reveals how Thomas' teammates, family and country have embraced him since coming out and raises the question if an All-Star athlete in the US were to announce they were gay, would they receive the same warm reception?
Below are excerpts of the story:
In Wales, Gareth Thomas is to rugby what Peyton Manning is in the United States to pro football. Thomas is Wales's career scoring leader and has been named to the national team more times than any other man. He is also the only active gay athlete in professional team sportsa burden that drove Thomas to career-threatening alcoholic binges and nearly sent him to an early grave. Award-winning SI senior writer Gary Smith pens a vivid and moving profile describing Thomas's torturous struggle to hide his identity while he experienced unprecedented success on the rugby pitch ( page 54 ) .
Thomas came out publicly in December 2009 to almost universal support from his home country of Walesa country of gritty coal miners. His saga also raises the question: Why has a country as diverse as America created an environment that's not open to gay athletes? Smith writes: "How do we answer Gareth Thomas? Where is our pioneer? Why hasn't one gay male athlete on a major professional team sport in our countryone who's still playing, not one retiredever come out? Even the U.S. military is preparing to cross the line that 25 other countries' armies already have. Will team sports be the last place in the U.S. where a gay man feels he must hide and lie?"
Thomas used feverish workouts and excessive amounts of alcohol to cope with the anxiety of his secret. It started to come to a boil in January 2006, when he was hit in the neck while playing professionally in France for Toulouse. Two weeks later, during a BBC Wales TV interview, Thomas was accused of leading an ouster of then national team coach Mike Ruddock and nearly came to blows with his interviewers. After he returned home to watch the interview with his wife, Jemma, his parents and Welsh teammate Ian Greenslade, he became deathly ill: "Pins and needles were running down his left arm. He sagged into a chair in the corner. His whole arm went numb. He realized, suddenly, that he couldn't move his neck, that his entire left side had no feeling, that the room was going dark. He opened his mouth to call out, but his tongue wouldn't move. His body slid to the floor…. A ministroke. Stress had rocketed [ Thomas's ] blood pressure so dramatically that it had collapsed an artery carrying blood to his brain, an artery that had been weakened by the blow he'd taken to his neck."
After his brush with death, Thomas could not hide any longer. First he came out to Jemma. Then, over the next three years, he confessed to close friends and family before his public announcement last December. Thomas's status was never threatened: "The newspaper and television coverage was unrelentingly positive. Support on the Internet came like a wave, 20,000 people signing up for a Support Gareth Thomas group on Facebook and a Twitter community gathering around him overnight, along with the expected sprinkling of scrum jokes. Letters thanking him poured in from across the world, from old gay men who'd lived in fear all their lives and young ones who'd abandoned sports."
With all the support Thomas has received, it baffles him why America doesn't seem to be as welcoming as his homeland has been: "The e-mails and letters and Twitter I get tells me there is so much confusion on this issue, and so many gay kids who love sports but get pushed away from it. A lot of the notes are from America. I love the United States … but why wouldn't the people who run your sports and who sponsor them make a public announcement that they welcome gay people and will support them? Because even if they feel that's bringing too much attention to something that should be a private matter, at this point that's what's needed."