&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Greg Louganis: The Greatest Diver in History Who Hit His Head at the Olympics &amp;mdash; and Was HIV-Positive When He Did It&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Clank&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Greg Louganis heard it before he felt it.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;I jumped off the board and I heard this big clank.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It was the preliminary round of the men&#39;s 3-metre springboard competition at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.olympics.com/en/olympic-games/seoul-1988&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1988 Seoul Olympics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Louganis &amp;mdash; the greatest diver in the history of the sport, the defending Olympic champion, the man his own coach called the &quot;Baryshnikov of diving&quot; &amp;mdash; had miscalculated his reverse two-and-a-half somersault. The back of his head connected with the springboard at speed.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://cms.goodbyehiv.com/Files/Pai/Celebrities%20with%20HIV%20%E2%80%93%2024%20%E2%80%93%20Greg%20Louganis%20The%20Greatest%20Diver%20in%20History%20Who%20Hit%20His%20Head%20at%20the%20Olympics%20%E2%80%94%20and%20Was%20HIV-Positive%20When%20He%20Did%20It%2001.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Celebrities with HIV &amp;ndash; 24 &amp;ndash; Greg Louganis The Greatest Diver in History Who Hit His Head at the Olympics &amp;mdash; and Was HIV-Positive When He Did It 01.jpg (178 KB)&quot; width=&quot;550&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: #808080;&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Greg Louganis hits the diving board during the 1988 Seoul Olympics.&lt;br /&gt;Image source:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sg.news.yahoo.com/greg-louganis-painful-moment-diving-history-1988-olympic-043012733.html?guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&amp;amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAEXUjU8YNqfJPBu6BdsbLEWyc1kyLrxwtGV8oHmm_F1NYIwbQdt5oAWKhgCg4ca6klOT0C_giduHpEnajFwN5xXET3WGev1jykqWxbp1_I7_dLWINHZlROuZ7_kdAvP6vrkT-rCEK_Ts478Eb_0uYSR5dfBcM6PY536q-f-CL-KA&amp;amp;guccounter=2&quot;&gt;AFP&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He hit the water. He surfaced. He was bleeding.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;And he was, unknown to everyone watching, HIV-positive.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;iframe src=&quot;//www.youtube.com/embed/UXCLVYvMFk8&quot; width=&quot;550&quot; height=&quot;314&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;allowfullscreen&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: #808080;&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Adrian Moorhouse clinches the men&#39;s 100m breaststroke gold at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, captured alongside the emotional reactions of his supportive family.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Six months before the Seoul Olympics, Greg Louganis had been diagnosed with HIV. He had been told, essentially, to prepare to die. His doctor had advised him to get his affairs in order. He was 28 years old and believed he probably would not live to see 30.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;None of that was visible as he climbed out of the pool that afternoon in Seoul, head bleeding, and waited while Dr. James Puffer stitched the wound &amp;mdash; without wearing gloves, without knowing his patient&#39;s HIV status. About half an hour later, Louganis climbed back onto the springboard. He completed his dives. He won the event.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;A week later, he won the 10-metre platform as well &amp;mdash; becoming the first male diver in history to win both events at consecutive Olympics.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It is one of the most remarkable sporting achievements of the twentieth century. And he accomplished it while carrying a secret that would not be revealed to the world for another seven years.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Born in San Diego, Made for the Water&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Gregory Efthimios Louganis was born on 29 January 1960 in San Diego, California &amp;mdash; the son of a teenage couple of Samoan and Swedish descent who gave him up for adoption as an infant. Peter and Frances Louganis adopted him and raised him in El Cajon, a suburb of San Diego.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He was a shy and introverted child who struggled with dyslexia and faced bullying at school. He found his escape in movement &amp;mdash; in gymnastics, in dance, and eventually in diving, which he began at the age of nine. On a springboard or a platform, the difficulties of the classroom fell away. He was extraordinary.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He competed at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.olympics.com/en/olympic-games/montreal-1976&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1976 Montreal Olympics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; at the age of 16 &amp;mdash; the youngest member of the US diving team &amp;mdash; and won a silver medal on the platform, finishing just behind the legendary Klaus Dibiasi of Italy.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Four years later, he was widely considered a favourite for gold at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, but the United States boycott kept him out of the Games.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He came back at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.olympics.com/en/olympic-games/los-angeles-1984&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1984 Los Angeles Olympics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and made up for the absence in stunning fashion. He won gold medals on both the 3-metre springboard and the 10-metre platform &amp;mdash; becoming the first male diver in 56 years to accomplish that double in Olympic competition &amp;mdash; and did so with a perfect score of 10 from all seven judges on one of his dives. It was the kind of performance that made even other elite athletes stop and stare.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://cms.goodbyehiv.com/Files/Pai/Celebrities%20with%20HIV%20%E2%80%93%2024%20%E2%80%93%20Greg%20Louganis%20The%20Greatest%20Diver%20in%20History%20Who%20Hit%20His%20Head%20at%20the%20Olympics%20%E2%80%94%20and%20Was%20HIV-Positive%20When%20He%20Did%20It%2002.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Celebrities with HIV &amp;ndash; 24 &amp;ndash; Greg Louganis The Greatest Diver in History Who Hit His Head at the Olympics &amp;mdash; and Was HIV-Positive When He Did It 02.jpg (133 KB)&quot; width=&quot;550&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: #808080;&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Image source:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.britannica.com/biography/Greg-Louganis&quot;&gt;Encyclop&amp;aelig;dia Britannica&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;By the time he arrived in Seoul in 1988, he had won 47 national titles &amp;mdash; more than any diver in US history &amp;mdash; and five world championships. His coach, Ron O&#39;Brien, had been told by corporate sponsors that Louganis would never appear on a Wheaties cereal box because of his sexuality &amp;mdash; a piece of casual homophobia that the sponsors apparently considered a reasonable business decision. It was 1988.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Diagnosis Before the Games&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Six months before the Seoul Olympics, Greg Louganis received his HIV diagnosis.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;I was training in Florida at the time,&quot; he later recalled, &quot;and I was gonna pack my bags, come back to California, lock myself in my house, and wait to die because we thought of HIV/AIDS as a death sentence.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;His doctor persuaded him otherwise. The healthiest thing he could do, he was told, was to keep training. Focus on the diving. Do what he did best.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He took that advice. He went to Seoul. He hit his head on the springboard. He bled into the pool. He sat poolside while a doctor stitched his wound without gloves, without knowing his patient&#39;s status.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;When I hit my head on the board, I was paralyzed by fear,&quot; he later said. &quot;I didn&#39;t know if I was cut or not, but I just wanted to hold the blood in and not let anybody touch it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He competed the next day. He won. He went on to win his fourth Olympic gold medal. And then he went home, and kept his secret for seven more years.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Breaking the Surface&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In 1994, Greg Louganis came out as gay at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nyclgbtsites.org/site/greg-louganis-gay-games-iv-at-asphalt-green-aquacenter/&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gay Games in New York&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &amp;mdash; the first time he had publicly identified his sexuality. His decision to come out publicly was met with support, although it came during a period when LGBTQ+ athletes still faced significant discrimination. He was 34 years old and had been carrying that particular truth for decades.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The second truth &amp;mdash; the HIV diagnosis &amp;mdash; came the following year.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;iframe src=&quot;//www.youtube.com/embed/VciMA6V7Wp0&quot; width=&quot;550&quot; height=&quot;314&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;allowfullscreen&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: #808080;&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;In a historic 1995 interview on ABC&#39;s 20/20, Olympic diving champion Greg Louganis courageously breaks his silence to disclose his HIV-positive status and his diagnosis of AIDS to Barbara Walters&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In February 1995, in an interview with Barbara Walters on ABC&#39;s 20/20, Greg Louganis told the world he was HIV-positive. More than that &amp;mdash; he disclosed that he had already progressed to AIDS. And he told the story of Seoul: the head injury, the bleeding pool, the doctor without gloves.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://cms.goodbyehiv.com/Files/Pai/Celebrities%20with%20HIV%20%E2%80%93%2024%20%E2%80%93%20Greg%20Louganis%20The%20Greatest%20Diver%20in%20History%20Who%20Hit%20His%20Head%20at%20the%20Olympics%20%E2%80%94%20and%20Was%20HIV-Positive%20When%20He%20Did%20It%2003.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Celebrities with HIV &amp;ndash; 24 &amp;ndash; Greg Louganis The Greatest Diver in History Who Hit His Head at the Olympics &amp;mdash; and Was HIV-Positive When He Did It 03.jpg (133 KB)&quot; width=&quot;550&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: #808080;&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Image source:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1025016.Breaking_the_Surface&quot;&gt;Annie Leibovitz / Goodreads&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The revelation sparked immediate controversy. The Seoul Olympic Organising Committee chairman criticised him for competing while HIV-positive. Fellow athletes questioned whether he should have disclosed his status to the doctor who treated him. The press focused heavily &amp;mdash; and some argued unfairly &amp;mdash; on the question of whether other athletes had been put at risk.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The medical facts, as healthcare professionals quickly clarified, were unambiguous: HIV cannot be transmitted in a heavily chlorinated swimming pool. The relevant concern was direct exposure to his blood, particularly for the medical personnel who treated his wound &amp;mdash; not the surrounding pool water.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;It&#39;s important to know how you get HIV and how you don&#39;t get HIV,&quot; Louganis said. &quot;You&#39;re not going to get HIV in a chlorinated pool. The people at risk were the doctors who sewed my head up poolside because they were in direct contact with the blood.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;That clarification &amp;mdash; delivered calmly, factually, and in public &amp;mdash; became one of the most significant HIV education moments of the mid-1990s. A large television audience that had never fully understood how HIV was and was not transmitted was exposed to an important public conversation about HIV.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;His autobiography, Breaking the Surface, was published in 1995 and became a New York Times bestseller. His HBO documentary, Back on Board, was released in 2014, introducing his story to a new generation.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Life Transformed&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Greg Louganis did not die at 30. He is now in his mid-sixties and remains active in diving and HIV advocacy. He has continued to share his knowledge and experience with younger generations of divers.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He appeared on a Wheaties box in 2016 &amp;mdash; more than three decades after his first Olympic gold medal and long after the assumptions that had once kept him off the box had begun to change.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;It&#39;s unbelievable,&quot; he told Time magazine in 2015, reflecting on how completely his outlook had changed since 1988. &quot;I never dreamed this day would be possible.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://cms.goodbyehiv.com/Files/Pai/Celebrities%20with%20HIV%20%E2%80%93%2024%20%E2%80%93%20Greg%20Louganis%20The%20Greatest%20Diver%20in%20History%20Who%20Hit%20His%20Head%20at%20the%20Olympics%20%E2%80%94%20and%20Was%20HIV-Positive%20When%20He%20Did%20It%2004.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Celebrities with HIV &amp;ndash; 24 &amp;ndash; Greg Louganis The Greatest Diver in History Who Hit His Head at the Olympics &amp;mdash; and Was HIV-Positive When He Did It 04.jpg (131 KB)&quot; width=&quot;550&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: #808080;&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Greg Louganis featured on the Wheaties Legends box, celebrating his historic Olympic achievements.&lt;br /&gt;Image source:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://theolympians.co/2016/04/07/greg-louganis-gets-his-wheaties-box/&quot;&gt;Roy Tomizawa / The Olympians&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He is the most decorated diver in Olympic history &amp;mdash; four gold medals, one silver, five World Championship titles and 47 national titles. His achievements remain among the most extraordinary in the history of Olympic diving. And he is, by any measure, living proof of what HIV treatment can do when it works &amp;mdash; and of what courage looks like when a person decides that the truth is more important than the secret.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What His Story Means&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Greg Louganis won four Olympic gold medals while living with HIV. He came out as gay in his mid-thirties, at a time when doing so still carried enormous professional cost. He disclosed his HIV status publicly and faced a backlash that, while ultimately unjust, prompted one of the most important public conversations about HIV transmission that the 1990s produced.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He was told at 28 that he might not live to see 30. Decades later, his story stands as a powerful reminder of how dramatically HIV treatment has changed.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;His story is not just about diving, or about HIV, or about the 1988 Olympics. It is about what happens when a person refuses to be defined by a diagnosis &amp;mdash; when they take the advice of a wise doctor, focus on what they do best, climb back onto the springboard about half an hour after the injury, and dive.&lt;/p&gt;

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