Standing on the podium at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Greg Louganis knew he was done. With his last ever competitive dive, he’d secured his second gold medal of the week and become the first male diver to win double gold in consecutive Games. His career total: three Games, four gold medals, one silver. He had become the greatest American diver ever; arguably the greatest ever full stop.
Six months before the Games, Louganis, then 28, had found out he was HIV positive. The Aids crisis was growing and there were no out gay athletes, let alone out HIV-positive ones. “I was gonna do the honourable thing, and pack my bags, go home, lock myself in my house and wait to die, because that’s what we thought of HIV at the time,” he says. But his doctor (who was also Louganis’s cousin) told him the healthiest thing he could do was continue training. So he carried on: not just with the gruelling training for the Olympics, but an exhausting programme of antiretroviral medication – in total secrecy. “The one thing that the diving did for me is give me a positive focus in my life,” he says. Still, his diagnosis had terrifying implications beyond his health; Louganis worried about it leaking to the press and of the public shame and possible expulsion that would follow.
As the favourite to win gold in 1988, he soared through the preliminaries. But then, on his ninth dive, he attempted a reverse two-and-a-half somersault with pike. He leapt up from the springboard, completed the mid-air rotations, and then, on his descent, smacked the back of his head on the board at nearly 70mph. The audience gasped. Louganis crashed into the water.
The blood only started to trickle down his head as he was walking away from the pool – his coach wiping it away so his Chinese rivals “wouldn’t see that my blood was red. I think he wanted them to believe that it was ice,” he says. He was concussed, face down on a bed, when he realised he was being stitched up, by a doctor who had no knowledge of his HIV status. He would later go on to describe being “paralysed by fear” at that moment. “They had direct contact, and there were no rubber gloves at the time,” he says now. “In so many of those situations, your focus is so narrow. It was like, the only people that existed were my coach and myself. You’re not really aware of who is around.”
After receiving the stitches, Louganis returned to the board and unleashed a near-perfect dive, prompting a standing ovation. But, stood on the podium afterwards collecting his medals, his thoughts were not on his extraordinary success. “If you were diagnosed HIV positive then, you had maybe two years to live. That was my thought,” he says now, aged 64, over a video call from his home in Topanga, California. “I knew that my career was essentially over and I didn’t know what the future held for me.”
There is a common misconception about Louganis that he often finds himself correcting. “A lot of people say: ‘You’re competitive.’ And I’m like: ‘No. I’m not. I’m a performer.’” It has been that way since he can remember.
Born in California, Louganis was adopted at nine months. His adoptive father was an accountant, and his mother a housewife (Louganis has an older sister, who was also adopted). As a toddler, he took classes in dance, acrobatics and gymnastics. By three, he was giving public performances. Even then he wanted to win – believing it would bring love and approval.
“It was hard for me,” he says. “Because I felt if my biological parents couldn’t love me, then nobody could love me.”
Louganis was a lonely child. “I just didn’t know where I fitted in,” he says. School life was tough. He had a stammer, was dyslexic and struggled academically. By contrast, he thrived in dance, acrobatics and gymnastics. “That was the one area that I did excel at, so it really was something of a saving grace,” he says, even though it resulted in bullying – a lot of it homophobic. This didn’t deter him, though. “It probably strengthened that determination to be that much more successful.”
He was also “very rebellious. I didn’t want to do the expected. You wouldn’t expect somebody in sports to hang out with the smokers and the kids who are getting high and all that stuff. But the only thing you had to do with those guys is smoke and get high, so the criteria bar was pretty low.”
When Louganis was nine, his parents built a pool in the back yard and he started diving. His mum signed him up for diving classes and, before long, he was competing in regional and national tournaments. But by 11, Louganis was already battling issues with self-esteem – a theme that would come to pervade his life and career. In competitions, he felt he wasn’t hitting his potential and was letting everyone down. “I was barely scraping through and I knew I was better than that,” he says.
A troubled relationship with his father didn’t help. His father would often drink and get angry (Louganis learned to avoid him at these times) – which jarred with his interest in his son’s sporting potential. “Whenever I was diving I felt that, in order for me to be deserving of love, I had to win. That was the feeling with my dad, for sure. That love was conditional.” During one practice session, Louganis refused to learn a new dive – a back one-and-a-half pike. “When we got home, Dad said: ‘Put your suit on.’ And he made me do it in the back yard pool. He took his belt off and it was pretty brutal.” To get revenge, Louganis made sure to smack the water really hard during entry in an attempt to make his father feel bad. He did this until he realised: “The only person that I’m hurting is myself.”
Before the finals of one competition, Louganis refused to leave the car to join his parents and coach for lunch. “I was just being a brat and my mother stayed with me.” She asked what was wrong. “I broke down. I said: ‘I feel like I’m disappointing everybody, and letting everybody down. I’m not performing up to what I’m capable of, and I just want to go home.’” His mother said that it would be OK if he did go home (“and she meant it”) and that the decision was his alone to make. Louganis only had a handful of dives left and decided to finish them. His mother made him promise that if he did dive, he would do it with a smile on his face – she wanted to see the performer in him. “I got up on the board and I looked out into the crowd and I found my mom, and she pointed to her lips to smile. And she just made me laugh.” The improvement was immediate. “I went from 12th to tied for second place.”
His mother “didn’t just tell me she loved me, she showed me,” says Louganis. “And that was so incredibly powerful. She’s definitely the first adult that I ever trusted.”
Louganis was just 16 when he competed in his first Olympics. His coach, the Olympic gold medallist Sammy Lee, was obsessive about Louganis beating the Italian champion, Klaus Dibiasi – and preventing him from beating Lee’s record. “All of my training and the lead-up to Montreal was about beating Klaus,” he says. His training sessions would consist of hypothetical scenarios, such as him being 20 points behind Dibiasi and needing nines on the next dive. “And then when I got to Montreal, I missed my ninth dive and so I failed.” Lee cursed him as he got out of the water.
When Louganis won his silver medal, he cried, believing he’d let everyone down. “It was the height of public shaming standing on that podium with that silver medal in front of the world,” he says, with total sincerity.
Does he still feel that way today? “No,” he says after a long, unconvincing pause. “No. I see it through different lenses now. But it took decades before I could hold that medal with any type of pride.”
Why? “The shame. The shame and guilt.”
After Montreal, Louganis switched coaches to Ron O’Brien. “He understood who I was, and what my motivation was. I knew that I was a performer, I’m not a competitor. So he gave me games to play in order to be successful on the world stage. He knew that that’s how I operated.”
But, with the US team boycotting Moscow 1980, Louganis would have to wait for Los Angeles in 1984 for his chance to win gold. “It was frustrating thinking: ‘Can I hold on this long?’, because that seemed like such a long time.” Olympians, he says “are like a carton of milk – we have an expiration date”.
Had he gone in 1980, Louganis suspects he would have won gold and left the sport behind. “Diving was something I was good at, at the time – it wasn’t something that I was particularly enjoying,” he says. “I was getting more into theatre, getting back to my dance roots. But when Moscow was taken away, it made those gold medals much more important.”
Competing in front of his home crowd in LA in 1984, Louganis finally won his gold medals in the three-metre springboard and 10-metre platform events. It took him a long time to rewatch his winning dives. Why? “I knew I was capable of better,” he says.
Louganis remembers first being attracted to men when he was seven. At the time he just assumed that’s how everyone was. He was often called “sissy” and “faggot” at school. As he entered his teens, he realised those insults meant “homosexual”. He kept his feelings a secret.
But by the time he got to the Montreal Olympics as a teenager, he began to tell his teammates. The reaction was mixed: he heard that some of the athletes no longer wanted to share a room with him; others ignored him completely. “I think that it was mostly jealousy because I was winning at the time,” he says. But then in 1985, competing at an event in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, signs reading “fagbuster” were put up all over the changing rooms. Louganis didn’t see most of them; his best friend, the springboard diver Megan Neyer, took them down, but “she missed the signs in the men’s room,” he says – and laughs.
Shortly before the Los Angeles Olympics, Louganis met James “Jim” Babbitt at a bar. They began dating, and before long Babbitt became Louganis’s manager.
The relationship was abusive. In their seven years together, Babbitt drove a wedge between Louganis and his friends and family. He cheated on him, and Louganis would later find out that Babbitt was a sex worker. In one incident, Babbitt raped Louganis at knife-point at home.
“I was a classic victim,” says Louganis. “I obviously drew this person to me, and then allowed a lot of this thinking: ‘Oh, I’m not enough, I’m deficient.’ So many things that we allow ourselves to believe, you know, which are lies.”
Towards the end of their relationship, Louganis became suspicious of Babbitt’s handling of his finances. A closer look revealed the extent of Babbitt’s deceit: he had transferred most of Louganis’s earnings into his own name, leaving Louganis with just $2,000. In 1989, Louganis ended the relationship and obtained a restraining order. Babbitt’s response was to threaten to out Louganis as HIV positive. The dispute was settled out of court; when Babbitt finally moved out of Louganis’s home, he defecated in the pool.
Louganis says he finds it hard to look back at their relationship. “I have to remind myself how far I’ve come, because it was so obvious to everyone else,” he says. “But I also see it as an incredible learning experience. To recognise that I am susceptible, but I am strong enough to stand on my own and I have to be that strength for myself.”
All things considered, Louganis’s victory in Seoul 1988 is as much a triumph of his character as it was his extraordinary skill as a diver.
Given his age (at 28, he was on the older side of divers) it was already set to be his toughest test yet. But the antiretroviral drugs he was taking – which needed to be swallowed every four hours, even through the night – brought on side-effects including fatigue. Louganis wasn’t sure if the exhaustion he felt was down to the pills or the nights he would lie awake worrying: what would happen if the Olympic committee found out he was HIV positive? Would his medication show up in the drugs test? How could he smuggle the drugs into Seoul? Would being in a foreign country expose him to new viruses? Just as he would manage to drift off to sleep, his alarm clock would ring: it would be time to take another tablet.
By the time Louganis arrived in Seoul, he had completed about 180,000 springboard dives across an 18-year career. Not once had he hit his head. And yet he remains convinced that the accident was nothing more than a “freak coincidence” and bore no correlation with everything he was dealing with internally. He thinks it was probably the muscle memory from practising on a board in the Hawaii training camp that was a little downhill, and which required a bit more leaning back.
When Louganis came out as HIV positive in the mid-90s, some media commentators looked back at the head injury – focusing sensationally on the supposed pool full of blood. Not only does HIV not transmit that way, there was no blood in the pool. Still, Louganis was lambasted for not alerting anyone. “Did Louganis act properly?” asked the Los Angeles Times. He says his only regret was not telling the surgeon who helped his cousin stitch up the cut at the time. The surgeon did not contract HIV and told the New York Times in 1994: “I don’t think anyone can criticise Greg for the decision he made at the time not to reveal his status.”
Seoul would mark the end of a groundbreaking career – five Olympic medals, 47 national and 13 world championships, the first diver to land a perfect score from every judge with one dive. “I’m so grateful everything happened the way that it did,” he says.
The immediate aftermath of his retirement was messy, and not just due to his own health and the lawsuit with Babbitt. Louganis’s father was diagnosed with cancer. “There was a lot to contend with,” he says. “A lot of that was just keeping my head above water and not drowning.”
In 1990 Babbitt died of Aids-related illnesses. The last contact Louganis had with him was to write him a note saying that he forgave him. “I don’t think about him a whole lot, but when I do, I feel bad for him. Because hurt people hurt people. He was in a lot of pain.”
He did manage to reconcile with his father, however. “We had really important conversations about life,” he says, “and time to address a lot of things that happened.” His father told him that as his own parents had died quite young, he had no idea what a father should look like. “He said that he saw so much talent in me – and he didn’t want me to waste that talent.” Tough love was the only way he could communicate. “I understood much more deeply that his intent was not malicious.” Louganis’s father, Peter, died in 1991.
A few years later, Louganis thought he was going to die too. He was rapidly losing weight, vomiting and suffering from fevers. He asked his mother and partner at the time to throw a big birthday party – an opportunity for him to say goodbye. Afterwards, he flew out to Florida and checked into a hospital under a false name. There he was diagnosed with an intestinal fungal infection, which doctors were able to treat.
Louganis finally came out at the Gay Games in 1994, announcing via video in the opening ceremony: “Welcome to the Gay Games, it’s great to be out and proud.” Coming out was a baby step though; shortly afterwards he published his memoir (with a front cover shot by Annie Leibovitz), which revealed his HIV diagnosis. The first interview went to Barbara Walters; then Oprah. It was a frenzied reaction.
“When we were on the book tour, people were saying: ‘You saved my life,’” he says. “I felt like I was living on an island with barely a phone for communication to the outside world, because of all the secrets. And I wasn’t the only one. There were a lot of people who were holding this in, who were not disclosing their HIV status, who were terrified and felt so alone and isolated.” People told him that they came out to their family through his book, or that it gave them strength to leave an abusive relationship. Louganis still has people coming up to him today. “It really empowered a lot of people. That is the thing that I’m most proud of – that it had that kind of impact.”
Louganis has had an eclectic post-diving career. He appeared in films and theatre productions (he majored in theatre in college), notably as Darius in an off-Broadway production of Jeffrey. He’s been a passionate activist for LGBT+ rights and HIV awareness (last year he sold some of his Olympic medals, raising money for HIV and LGBT+ charities). He’s undertaken various coaching and mentoring roles for younger divers, and today is part of the athlete relations team on the LA28 Olympic committee.
And then there are his dogs. “I’ve always done better with animals than I have people,” he says. “It’s where I felt trust and honesty.” Behind Louganis is a huge painting of him with two of his late dogs: Nipper, a jack russell terrier, and Freeway, a great dane. “Those two are my true-heart dogs. They were the reason I got up when I was going through HIV treatments, and through all that they were right by my side.”
Louganis is the co-author of For the Life of Your Dog, a comprehensive guide to dog ownership, and trains dogs for dog agility competitions. “The dogs love it. They’re having fun. And, yeah, I want to be the best that I can be for them.”
In the 2014 documentary Back on Board, Louganis talks about his money struggles. The film opens with him on the phone to his bank, unable to pay his mortgage. “So many people make the assumption that you’re famous, you’re an Olympic gold medallist, so you have to be rich,” he says.
Part of that assumption is because of the sponsorship deals that Team USA athletes get. While Louganis had a contract with Speedo (whose president made a point of standing by him after he came out as HIV positive), compared with his peers at the time (notably the gymnast Mary Lou Retton) he had barely any endorsement work. Rumours about his sexuality had circulated for years before he came out. Does he think homophobia played a part in his lack of commercial endorsements? “Oh yeah, for sure,” he says. “That’s kind of a given.” When a reporter in the 80s contacted the makers of Wheaties breakfast cereal to find out why Louganis hadn’t been featured on the box yet – a sort of rite of passage for elite-level athletes – they were told that Louganis didn’t fulfil their demographics (he was featured in 2016 as part of a legends series).
His HIV diagnosis also had a significant financial impact on him, and not just because of the $100,000 a year he paid for treatment. “I blew through a lot of the money that I made because I thought: ‘I don’t have a future, I’m not gonna be here.’ And then when I got to a certain age, it was like, holy shit, I’m gonna be here for a while. I gotta get a job!”
Does he have any permanent injuries from his career as a diver? “Well, it’s like, what’s permanent?” he says. “Yeah, I have issues with my back. I have issues with my neck. I learned I have issues with my brain because, you know, I had two major concussions in my diving career.”
Does he have any regrets? “No. I think I did everything the way I was supposed to.”
After all his achievements, Louganis says he is still plagued by low self-esteem. “It’s something I’m still working on,” he says. “I’ve accomplished a lot of shit, and it’s just like: ‘Why can’t I own it and embrace it?’”
He traces it back to growing up. “I loved my mom – but I have an older sister and she was concerned that I would outshine my older sister. So I played everything down.” Successful people, he says, are expected to dim their light to make everyone else feel more comfortable. “We want to fit in and we want to be accepted. It’s like: ‘Oh, yeah, I won a few medals, it’s not that important.’ I have to stop that.”
But does it help when you hear people say you’re the greatest diver of all time?
“It’s funny, because when I first heard ‘You’re the Goat [greatest of all time], I thought: ‘I’m an Aquarius. I’m not Capricorn!” he says. “But it’s flattering. And I look back on it and say: ‘Yeah, I guess I kind of am.’” It’s a rare moment of self-assurance from Louganis.
“What people don’t understand is I want to see my records broken. I know what it felt like, but I want to experience it through someone else.”
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