But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Outspoken podcast Network. Hey, it's Jordan. A tiny note. Will be going on a two week break for the holidays, but we'll be back on January eighth. I want to thank you all for all of the amazing support this year, and I can't wait to share more episodes. Here's today's show.
And it was my thought that if I was HIV positive, then I would pack my bags, go back to California, lock myself in my house, and wait to die, because that's how we thought of HIV AIDS. And so when he came by and gave me the results that I was HIV positive, I mean, it was like ringing in my ears. I couldn't really hear anything. I thought I was just going to pack up and go home. And then my cousin said, you know, the healthiest thing for you to do continue training.
As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South, I thought being gay was the worst thing I could ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn that by seeking out our history, and what I've found are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love. In this episode, we'll meet Greg lugainis often said to be the greatest diver in the history of the world. We'll learn about his path to becoming an Olympic gold medalist and how that path was paved with loneliness, shame,
and ultimately triumph. From My Heart podcast, I'm Jordan and Solves and this is what we loved. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a famous opera singer. It was actually my dream. I even went to a special high school in Texas where I studied opera for four years, and I was really competitive. My singing journey began because both my parents were musicians. They would gleam with pride every time I nailed a performance. I used to get this high from all the people that would
approach me to congratulate me and my parents. In my heart, I never really loved singing. I would get unbelievably anxious before a performance. What I really loved was making them proud. I thought a great performance could convince them that I wasn't the disappointing sissy child everyone knew I was. I gave up singing when I was in college and spent a while thinking that I was a failure for letting them down. I didn't realize until my adulthood that my
parents always loved me for who I was. Up until that point, I didn't define myself by my character. I defined myself by what I could achieve. My next guest, Greg Luganis, has a similar story, but he wasn't a singer. He's the greatest diver that ever lived, but just like me, growing up, his hunger to be the best was driven by a desire to be loved. Okay, so we usually start the show off Greg by asking every single guest, what was the moment that you knew you were gay? Yeah?
What was that moment for you?
I was really young when I was, I mean even before I knew about sexuality or anything like that. I was probably about four or five. You know, I knew I was different. What that meant, I didn't know. I just knew that I was just this odd kid. And I didn't put sexuality to it until I was in my early teens. Actually, it was my first Olympic Games in Montreal nineteen seventy six. I came out to somebody who I would who I thought would be sympathetic and all. And then when I told him that I thought I
was gay. He wouldn't be in the same room with me, he'd avoid me. He made sure that people were around when we were together. It's like, oh my god, this is not cool. The message that I got in my head was that, yeah, being gay is not not a good thing.
And you were a teenager at that point.
Yeah, I was sixteen. Wow, I was sixteen.
And when did you first get into diving?
Well, okay, so I started in dance and acrobatics when I was year and a half, and I was performing on stage when I was three and I sang dance with me and did a tap number, and so then shortly after that, I got a partner, and then we couldn't compete in talent contests until I turned six, so we would do all of these performances and recitals, convalescent homes, parades, country fairs, that sort of thing. So then by the
time we started competing, we were like winning everything. When I was twelve, there was this huge talent contest in San Diego and just you know, people came from everywhere and my partner and I won sweepstakes, and also my partner I think I was like six or seven years old and she went into gymnastics and I followed her into gymnastics. Gymnastics was my first love. That's where I thought, oh,
I want to make the Olympic team in gymnastics. But when I was twelve thirteen, I had osny slaughters, which is water on the knee and it's very common for young, super super physically active children. And so my doctor said that I had to quit the dance and acrobatics because we were on cement performing on cement, and that I had to quit gymnastics. But I could continue diving because you're landing in water and it doesn't have that impact.
So once I quit everything and focused all of that energy into one discipline, my diving crew just took off. I mean I was world champion for my age group when I was thirteen. Three years later, I was on my first Olympic team. So that was kind of my path.
And you were adopted as a baby. I wonder what that was like for you growing up.
You know, that's a whole thing. Because your podcast is all about shame. That was the biggest shame that I felt I had to look at to identify because my mother was sixteen when she had me, and so I was born into shame.
Wow.
And the other thing too was that her family was quite racist, and so because of my father being someone they knew I would be darker skinned, there was a lot of shame while going into even my existence. And I felt shame that I existed because I ruined this young girl's life.
Your birth mother, my birth mother. Yeah, and you have spoken openly about your relationship with your dad, and I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that and how it sort of shaped you.
So the dad that I was raised with, he was Greek and we were raised Greek, and so with dad, I always felt judged by him. I felt that in order for me to be able to be loved and worthy of love, you know, I had to be the best. So a lot of my diving kind of came from that, that desperation. It's a very desperate place to come from. It's not real healthy. And I always felt that that dad was judging me.
Did he know or suspect from a young age that you might be gay? Do you think that's why he sort of maybe treated you differently.
I think that he had his own struggles, you know, which is really interesting, So I think that dad was dealing with his own issues for himself.
You had mentioned earlier, Greg that you sort of wanted to be the best that you could be, sort of to win over the love of your parents, which is an experience I think so many queer people have and share with one another. Was that what was sort of driving a lot of this competitive spirit and sort of wanting to be the best and when within diving at that age.
So when I was really young, I felt like a throwaway child.
You know.
I was like, oh, if my mother could throw me away, then anybody could. So I had to be deserving of love. And how was I going to be able to deserve that? And I didn't really have academics because when I first started school, I stuttered, so I was in speech therapy. I had difficulty reading. Later I learned that I'm dyslexic. I could show people that I could dance, I could dive, I could do these these things and get attention. So that was how I felt that I was going to be deserving of being loved.
Was there a moment when you knew that you were going to be a star diver at that age?
You know, it's funny because I never thought I was good enough. Really yeah, I never thought I was good enough. It wasn't until I was at the World Championships in nineteen eighty two. I was twenty two, and by then I had already been a world champion. I won the Pan American Games, the World Championships, so I was diving last.
I won the prelims, and so Alexander Portnoff from the Soviet Union was introduced as Olympic gold medalist nineteen eighty and then I was introduced Greg Lugannis from the United States of America Olympic silver medalist nineteen seventy six, and I was thinking in my head, you're the gold medalist because I wasn't there.
In nineteen eighty Greg was the favorite to win gold at the Moscow Summer Olympics, but the United States decided to boycott the games in protest of the Soviet Union. Greg wasn't able to compete, and his Soviet rival Alexander portnov won instead. The next chance to compete against him was at the World Aquatic Championships in Ecuador two years later. Greg was determined to win.
And so I always wanted my performance to speak for itself. I didn't want to have to speak for my performance, and so I just kind of took that on that I had something to prove. And then, as it turned out, it was beautiful day in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and I was
just going along in the competition. Everything was going really great, and then came down to the last dive and I checked the score to make sure that it was the correct dive number, and it was the correct dive number, but my score was still flashing on the board, which meant I had already won. Wow, I didn't have to do my last dive to be world champion. And so that's when I felt like I stepped into that I belonged there, I belong on the world stage. I'm worthy
of being there. And so that was when that switch happened for me as far as recognizing that, yeah, I'm one of the best in the world.
And sort of at the same time, Greg, you've been pretty open about having started with drinking and drugs that around that time are a little bit earlier. Tell me about that and what was sort of driving that.
Well, A lot of it was in order to fit in, you know, to fit in with the po heads all you got to do is smoke pot, you know, and so that was an easy way to get into this group. I was just searching for connection.
What you're saying is you were searching for a sense of belonging. Yeah. Yeah. Were you lonely at that age.
Yeah, yeah. I recognize that more now in retrospect, that I was just searching for connection.
Growing up as a lonely child. Greg enjoyed diving because at first he thought if he was the best diver, perhaps his father would love him. But later it was his relationship with his coach that made him stay. Although the world didn't know he was gay, his coach did, and he accepted him and loved him for it. But rumors about his sexuality began swirling, and in the mid eighties,
being openly gay was not popular. America was going through a conservative renaissance, and aids, the deadly disease that no one wanted, was particularly associated with the gay community. Even though Greg had won gold medals in the nineteen eighty four Los Angeles Olympics and was already considered the greatest diver in the world, he never got the famous Wheaties box or nearly as many sponsorships as his Olympic counterparts
in the eighties. You win two gold medals at the Los Angeles Olympic Games, but you were pretty underrepresented in terms of sponsorships, especially compared to some of the other athletes in track and gymnastics that were getting multiple high profile sponsorships. Why do you think you weren't being true?
Did the same, Yeah, I mean, it was rumored about my sexuality. It was just my policy not to discuss my personal life with members of the media. And actually at that time, the members of the media respected that there was plenty to read between the lines. You could figure it out, but it was just my policy not to discuss my personal life with members of the media. And so, yeah, rumors, they definitely get get in the
way of the potential. And also, I mean there's morals clauses in your contracts and morals clauses.
Yeah yeah, wow yeah. And so basically what you're saying is, at that time, you were rumored to be gay, and that was seen by the public as immoral, and these brands didn't want to align themselves with someone that was quote immoral for being gay, right, yeah wow, Yeah. How did that kind of make you feel at that age when you knew that, well, damn it, I'm one of the best athletes in the world, you know.
My pursuit and diving, it wasn't I was always trying to prove myself. So I never kind of got stuck and like, oh look what I did, you know, because it was always about Okay, what can you do now? So that's where my focus was. You're only as good as your last competition. Yeah, and there's always another competition on the horizon. I'm not competitive. I'm not competitive, and people go, you win all these metals, you have to
be competitive. No. I was a performer. It was always about the performance, and if anybody came to me, I was really shy. But if anybody came to me and asked for help, I mean I'd help them beat me because I knew if I could elevate their level of performance, it would elevate mine. So it was never about competition. It was always about performance. And that's the reason why my coach, Ron O'Brien, he got that. He understood it's all for me. It was about the performance.
Was your coach kind of one of the only people in your life at that time that you felt really saw you and loved you.
Him and my mom. Wow, my mom was incredible. My first Junior Olympic Nationals, I wasn't diving as well as I knew I was capable of. I had I think, three more dives for the finals. And I told her I didn't want to go back to the pool, and she said, okay, that's fine. Wow, and she was sincere we didn't have to go back to the pool. And so then I thought, well, I'm already kind of committed, so you know, I just have three three dives, and she said, okay, you have to make me a promise
when you get on the board, smile. And so my first dive, I'm get on the board, they announced the dive, I set the fulk rum and I looked towards my mom and she's pointing at the sides of her mouth, you know, you know, raising her you know, making a smile, and it just made me laugh. And so I went from wherever I was, you know, twelfth or whatever, I ended up tying for second place. Wow, with my last
three dives. So with my mom, I knew that I didn't have to dive, you know, she just wanted me to have fun and Greg in.
The eighties, right before the nineteen eighty eight Olympic Games, you were diagnosed with HIV. I wonder if you take me to that moment when you were diagnosed. This is at a time when AIDS debts are climbing every year, stigma around the virus is at an all time high, and you are on track to literally become one of the world's greatest athletes in the next games. What was going through your mind during that diagnosis.
I was having some problems with my ear, you know, ear infection or something. And then I went into the doctor and I said, oh, by the way, I'd like to do an HIV test anonymously.
And I'm guessing this is in the midst of like some pretty intense training for the games that are coming up.
Right, And so I knew it was an important year. And so my doctor, who was my cousin, I said, you know, I want to do an HIV test. And I said, oh, you have nothing to worry about, you know, and all that, and I said, no, I just would rather know. And it was my I thought that if I was HIV positive, then I would pack my bags, go back to California, lock myself in my house and wait to die, because that's how we thought of HIV AIDS.
And so when he came by and gave me the results that I was HIV positive, I mean, it was like ringing in my ears. I couldn't really hear anything, I wasn't really absorbing anything, and I was thinking, oh my god, I got to pack up because I don't want to waste my coach's time. I don't want to waste my teammates' time.
You're thinking about everybody else.
Yeah, yeah, I thought I was just going to pack up and go home. And then my cousin said, you know, the healthiest thing for you to do is continue training, and he wanted to treat me very aggressively. So we met with Anthony Fauci and he made AZT available to me because was the only drug that was available for treatment at that time.
After years of AIDS being a death sentence, a bright spot appeared. The FDA approved its very first drug to treat HIV. It was an old cancer drug from the sixties that never quite served its original purpose, but researchers twenty years later got some promising evidence that it could maybe fight HIV. This was exciting and Being that Greg had a national profile, he got access to the coveted drugs. Little did he know, little did anyone know, that AZT
wasn't effective. The virus would quickly adapt to AZT, mutate and replicate, but the patient would be left with serious side effects. AZT caused heart problems and weight loss, muscle fatigue, and depletion of the bone marrow, and in some patients it ended up accelerating AIDS, but at the time it was the only hope for survival. Greg had officially started his training for the nineteen eighty eight Olympics in Seoul and officially started taking AZT.
I learned that one of the side effects of AZT was it depletes your testosterone. And I remember, and I didn't equate it to the AZT. I just thought, you know, this is a natural process. I was literally crawling from my bed in the morning to the bath to pour myself the hottest bath so that I could just soak and function, touch my toes and walk. I thought I was overtraining, you know, because the Chinese had caught up to me and I was pushing myself really hard. I
just assumed that I was overtraining. I didn't realize that it could have been the AZT, and it most likely was. And so I and I've watched the videotapes of my performance in eighty eight versus just a year before, and I can see the difference. I wasn't jumping as high, I wasn't spinning as fast. So I mean, it's almost like, you know, ignorance is bliss, you know, Like when I was diagnosed dyslexic, I was like, I'm glad I didn't know, because then it would be an excuse to not try
as hard. Same thing with the AZT. Had I known, it would have given me an excuse not to perform.
Wow. Right, And the other piece of this greg is that nobody knew your HIV status. Right.
They couldn't. They couldn't because there was a travel band at that time. Because I was trying to get Ryan White, the young boy from Indiana who contracted HIV through clotting factor. He was a hemophiliac. I was trying to get him to Seoul to share my Olympic experience with him because he was a friend of mine, and they wouldn't allow him into the country because of his HIV status.
Wow.
Because there was a travel ban, so I knew about that, and then now knowing about my HIV status, you know, I wouldn't have been able to travel to Soul, Korea.
In nineteen eighty eight, Greg traveled to Seoul to compete in the Summer Olympic Games and defend his gold medal status, but in one of his first dives, he miscalculated his jump and famously hit his head on the diving board and felt blood. In a single moment, he was faced with the decision to out himself not only as a gay man, but as a gay man living with HIV.
I took off the board. I knew I was going to be close, so then I bring my arms when I come out of the dive. My arms are very close to my body, so my hands wouldn't hit because that's usually what hits. And then I heard this big hollow thud and I go crashing into the water. I'm like, what the how was that? And I realized, oh my god, that was my head And so I mean it took a minute to figure that out. When you get an injury like that, it doesn't bleed right away. But yeah,
there was no blood in the pool. It wasn't until I got out of the pool. I was holding my head and I walked over to my coach and we were making our way into this office space for treatment. And that's when he saw a trickle of blood coming down and he pushed it back into my hairline when I had dark hair, because he didn't want the Chinese to know that I bled red.
So he knew your coach knew my coach.
Knew about my HIV status. But he was the only one on the pool deck who did.
I wonder what was going through your mind when you hit the water and you knew that you had hit your head and there was sort of now all of this commotion around this and you saw the blood trickle down or you felt it from your head. What was going through your mind at that time?
My first emotion that I felt was I was embarrassed. I was thinking, Okay, how do I get out of this pool without anybody seeing me? Because the whole world is watching, right. But I grabbed my head and then I made my way to my coach, Run O'Brien, and I'm thinking, Okay, what's my responsibility, what's my responsibility? What should I do?
I was paralyzed by fear.
It was very challenging. I thought I was totally out of the contest because I saw some zero's up there on the scoreboard. Just figured that, oh, I'm out of the running. And then my coach run O'Brian asked somebody to check the standings, and I think they ran out to.
The scoreboard, his score.
Table, and he came back and said he's in fifth. I was in fifth place and I had two more dives and my coach ron said, well, what do you want to do? And I, it was kind of a knee jerk response, said, you know, we've worked too long and hard to get here. I don't want to give up without a fight. So then the doctors tended to my head. You know, I got six stitches. They said, well we can, we can numb it up, but that's
going to take longer. I said, no, just sew it. Wow, you know, So they sewed my head up, and then I was walking with with my coach. He said, come on, let's let's take a walk. And he said, look, Greg, I know after that your confidence has shattered, and I know that you don't believe in yourself, but I want you to believe in me because I believe in you.
I want to just go back for a second. Greg, when you said that there was a fear there, what was the fear that you were contending with? Deep down?
The fear was more what is my responsibility in this situation? You don't want to keep information that you have from somebody that can affect anything they do, right, So that was kind of what I was kind of toying with in my mind.
And after the injury, you executed two perfect dives and then win two gold medals.
Yeah, five or better?
You will make it into the finals. Yes, And I'm wondering what was it like being on the podium, receiving that and knowing everything that you had been through.
There's a much bigger picture because my coach, Ron O'Brien and I had been through so much. While we were at the Olympic trials, his son in law committed suicide, and then while we were at the Olympic Games, his mother had a stroke and fell into a coma. She actually died during the Olympics. So he didn't know if he was staying or going to be going home to take care of affairs. So there was a lot going on, you know. My whole HIV story was there as well.
We got our Olympic rings. You know, after all the competition, we had a team dinner and all the divers would go up and share with their experience was in soul and I received my ring and I turned to Ron directly and I said, nobody will ever know what we've just been through. And I honestly believed that, because I thought I would be dead, I was going to take this to the grave.
Your HIV status, Yeah, yeah.
He coached me the last ten years of my diving career. There was so much love, trust and faith in each other. You know, I'm a firm believer. You don't achieve greatness on your own. There's always somebody there, and for me at that moment in time, it was my coach.
When we come back. After Greg wins gold at the Olympics, he begins dying because of AIDS. At the nineteen eighty eight Olympics, Greg all the odds and one gold twice, but even being one of the greatest athletes to ever live,
he wasn't immune from the fatal effects of AIDS. By the early nineties, it had become clear that there were still no effective treatments for HIV once rippling and bulging with the muscles of an Olympian Greg Like so many AIDS patients looked like a skeleton because of wasting, a symptom of AIDS where body weight would rapidly drop because of fever, diarrhea, and weakness. After the Olympics were over, was there a point where your HIV began to progress and you thought that you might die. Yeah.
I'm not much for surprises. I'm not crazy about surprises. But my thirty third birthday, I was wasting, you know, I was losing weight. We couldn't figure out what was going on. We didn't know and say I gave my address book to my then partner and my mom and said, naked, throw me a surprise birthday party. The surprise was going to be I didn't know who was going to show up, but I thought I was saying goodbye to everybody. After that, I did go to Florida, checked myself into the hospital
under an assumed name. I was prepared to die. I wasn't prepared to live.
Wow. In nineteen ninety five, you revealed your HIV status to Barbara Walters and to the world and Oprah yes, and Noprah, what did that feel like for you? It was terrifying.
I was working with a therapist and we really hadn't talked about talking about HIV in the public. And on the eve of the Barbara Walters interview, I was supposed to have an appointment and I showed up to my appointment and there was a note on his door saying to call his associate, you know, if this is an emergency. I just figured he got tied up doing something else. And then I got a call from my editor, Mitchell Ivers, and he said my therapist passed away. And I was
I mean, I was numb. I didn't know what to do. So when I showed up to the interview, Barbara could sense that there was something going on, and so she said, Greg, what's going on? And I told her that my therapist just passed and she just threw her arms around me and just held me and said, we'll get through this together. M You know, that was just yeah, that was really really challenging.
Wow, and that is the context or you also revealing your HIV status to the world too, right? And what was that like?
I knew that it was the next step on my journey because I felt like I was living on an island with barely a phone for communication to the outside world. You know, secrets isolate you, and so I thought in my mind, I was sharing all my weaknesses. I started I was dyslexic, I'm gay, I'm HIV positive, I was in an abusive relationship, all of these things that I perceived as being weak or damaged. And I realized by sharing my perceived weaknesses, I was actually sharing my strength.
And was it a relief for you to then have this secret be out in the open that you weren't hiding anymore or expending energy hiding anymore? Right?
And that's exactly right. You're expending that energy to keep a secret, whereas being authentic is really empowering, you know, it's energizing. But when you have secrets, what did I tell this and what did I tell that one? I mean, it is exhausting. And so yeah, I mean it was very, very freeing. One of the phrases that kept coming to me the truth shall set you free, and so that was, yeah, that was that was pretty powerful.
You know, Greg, it kind of feels like all of the elements of your life, your childhood, your relationship, with your dad, your sexuality, your HIV status. They all kind of intersect and interweave in ways with your sport diving, and I wonder what did and diving and being a part of that, and how all of those identities and moments, what did it teach you about yourself?
I think what it taught me is the importance of people. It's about connection. My connection was with my coach, Ron O'Brien. That was more important than the sport and sports just a sport.
In all of my reporting, Greg, what I've learned is that what people continuously say over and over again is that shame, the opposite of shame is belonging, and exactly what you said, it's connection, it's community, it's relationships. And I wonder have you found that. We started this story off kind of talking about how you spent a large portion of your early life seeking that out, and I wonder if you have found that.
I'm working on it because really in a healthy way, and you have to start with yourself. You have to love yourself because then that allows you to have the love to give. You're not going to find love outside of yourself if you're looking outside of yourself for love. Or to be loved, then you'll be disappointed every time. You really have to start with yourself. So that's something that I'm really really working on.
What We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolves. New episodes drop every Wednesday. A tiny note will be going on a two week break for the holidays, but we'll be back on January eighth. If you want to write in to tell your story, email us at but we Love at gmail dot com, or you can send me a message on Instagram or TikTok at your underscore gooin solve this. We are a production of The Outspoken Podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts. But We Loved was originally developed
with Pushkin Industries. Our producers are Joey pat Emily Meronoff, and Christina Loranger. Our executive producers are Me, Maya Howard and Katrina Norvil. Original music by Steve Boone. Special thanks to Jay Brunson and Roquel Willis. If you loved this episode, leave us a rating and follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.