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Welsh rugby legend comes out
Gareth Thomas: "I'm proud of who I am"
Welsh rugby star Gareth Thomas is gay.
Welsh rugby star Gareth Thomas is gay.
The 35-year-old Cardiff Blues player and former Wales full-back and the country’s most capped rugby player has come out to the Daily Mail.
In doing so he has broken one of the major taboos in international rugby and sport.
Thomas, who has known he was gay since his teens, first revealed his sexuality to Wales coach Scott Johnson, after the player’s split with his wife Jemma.
"[Johnson] took me out of the team room to the medical room, locked the door and I told him everything,” Thomas told the newspaper.
"After keeping it secret for so long, I felt a huge rush of relief.
"Scott said, 'Right, I've got to speak now to three or four players in the Welsh team because you need the boys to surround you and support you. You can't cope with this on your own,' and he was right.
"He told two of my team-mates, Stephen Jones and Martyn Williams, and. as I sat in the bar waiting for them, I was absolutely terrified, wondering what they were going to say.
"But they came in, patted me on the back and said: 'We don't care. Why didn't you tell us before?'
"Two of my best mates in rugby didn't even blink an eyelid."
Thomas acknowledges that rugby is the toughest and most macho of sports, and doubts whether he would have risen so far in the game if he had been openly gay throughout his career.
“I knew I would never be accepted as a gay man and still achieve what I wanted to achieve in the game,” he said.
“I would play along with the other lads. I had all the chit-chat. I knew which girls to flirt with, which girls to say were nice, which ones to say weren’t.
“I’d make up stories about sexual conquests to fit in.
“I became the master of disguise and could play the straight man down to a tee.”
Thomas feels that the time is right now for him to come out and hopes that his coming out will help other people as well.
“I’m not going on a crusade,” he said. “But I’m proud of who I am. I feel I have achieved everything I could ever possibly have hoped to achieve out of rugby, and I did it being gay.
“I want to send a positive message to other gay people that they can do it too.”
