Results tagged “matthewmitcham”

Oksana Chusovitina: A mother's love knows no bounds and this is fully exemplified in the life story of Oksana Chusovitina, only one of a handful of women to stay in competitive gymnastics after motherhood. She formerly represented the Soviet Union and her native Uzbekistan and has competed for Germany since 2006. When her son Alisher was diagnosed in 2002 with leukemia and doctors in Moscow could not guarantee quality care, Chusovitina accepted an offer of help from the head coaches of the Toyota Cologne club and moved to Germany. With her competition prize money and funds raised by members of the international gymnastics community, she was able to secure treatment for her son at the University of Cologne's hospital while training with the German team. Chusovitina is the only female gymnast ever to compete in five Olympic Games, and won a silver in the vault final at the Beijing Games.

Going into the final dives of the men's 10-meter platform competition, it looked like China was about to sweep all eight diving gold medals, with Zhou Luxin and Huo Liang in first and second place. But Australia's Matthew Mitcham, trailing the leader Zhou by more than 30 points, went for broke with a 3.8 degree of difficulty dive, a back two and a half somersault with two and a half twists. He got four perfect 10s and scored 112.10, the highest score in the history of Olympic diving, to snatch the gold from his Chinese competitors. Mitcham is the only openly gay man competing at these Olympics.

Jim Buzinski of Outsports.com reports that out of the record 10,708 athletes attending the Beijing Olympics, only 10 of them are openly gay — and all of them are women except for Australian diver Matthew Mitcham. The nine out women are: Judith Arndt (Germany, cycling), Imke Duplitzer (Germany, fencing), Gro Hammerseng and Katja Nyberg (Norway, handball and a lesbian couple), Natasha Kai (U.S., soccer), Lauren Lappin (U.S., softball); Victoria "Vickan" Svensson (Sweden, soccer); Rennae Stubbs (Australia, tennis) and Linda Bresonik (Germany, soccer). In addition, there is also U.S. softball player Vicky Galindo, who has identified herself as a bisexual and was interviewed by the Advocate. In Athens in 2004, there were 11 openly gay athletes while in Sydney there were only seven.