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Becoming only the sixth professional male athlete from one of the four major US sports – basketball, baseball, football and hockey – to openly discuss his homosexuality, John Amaechi has been named a national spokesperson for a Human Rights Campaign (HRC) project aimed at helping LGBT people come out and live openly gay.
The 36-year-old, who spent five seasons with four teams before retiring from sport three years ago, is now a TV personality in England. His announcement comes in advance of the release of his book Man In The Middle, in which he chronicles his NBA career and directly addresses the travails of being a closeted professional athlete.
Like Amaechi, the other five male professional athletes – football players David Kopay, Esera Tuaolo and Roy Simmons, and baseball players Billy Bean and the late Glenn Burke – came out after their careers ended. Kopay was the first retired athlete to come out in 1977 with his book, The David Kopay Story. Other well-known gay male athletes are American Greg Louganis, a four-time Olympic gold medalist in diving, who announced that he is gay in 1994 and HIV-positive the year after; and Australian rugby player Ian Roberts became the first major sports personality in Australia to come out in 1995.