Irish athlete Denis Finnegan has come out as gay. In the podcast “Five things to rule them all” by “Outsports”, the professional athlete declared he was gay. His wish for the future:  more queer athletes dare to live their lives openly.

Finnegan has already won 10 national gold medals in triple jump – since 2012 he has been Irish champion in this discipline throughout. The 33-year-old currently lives in Melbourne, Australia. The outing to his family had already taken place before his public coming-out, he explained in the podcast. It had gone well.

He was mostly afraid of that – and not of the reactions on a sporting and professional level. The worst thing was his own ideas and the fear of what might happen. Fortunately, none of that happened.

Athletics has always been his favourite sport, as it is the most “open”, Finnegan said. The individual sport of athletics offers a higher level of comfort than male team sports – such as football and basketball. He was never afraid of stupid comments in training – that would certainly have been different in football, the Irish professional athlete believes.

Finnegan made his story public in the hope that his outing would give younger people more self-confidence in what they do. The more people come out, the easier it would be for others and especially for future generations, the athlete said. He made it clear:

“There are still people who are afraid or not sure what is happening, so I hope that telling my story might help a person realise that there is more acceptance out there.”

More outings in professional sports

Recently, the number of coming-outs of international sports stars has increased. The Canadian swimmer Markus Thormeyer came out in February. This month the Swiss top athlete Curdin Orlik declared that he no longer wanted to hide.

In mid-March, Argentina got Sebastian Vega, the country’s first openly gay, active basketball professional. The 31-year-old plays for the Gimnasia de Comodoro team. After his outing, he reported that his teammates had received his confession wonderfully and would support him.

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