Greg Louganis

Gregory " Greg" Efthimios Louganis ( born January 29, 1960 in El Cajon ) is a former American professional diver and a longer time Olympic champion and world champion in the water jump.

Born as a child of minor parents, a Swedish mother and a Samoan father, he was adopted after his birth by a Greek- American family. Early on he got ballet lessons and began to train water jumping. Already 16 years old, he won the silver medal in platform diving at the Summer Olympic Games in Montreal in 1976. Two years later he became world champion in this discipline. Due to the boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 his winning streak was interrupted for the time being. In 1982 he was the first the highest rating with maximum 10 points from all seven judges after a 1 ½ somersaults gehechtet.

At the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, he was double Olympic champion in diving and the 3- meter board, scoring record notes, which had previously never been achieved with such events. This double success he could repeat four years later, at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul. This was still no other diver in front of him. Spectacular in this context was one of his leaps from the 3- meter board, when he hit his head on the board, had to have stitches and despite this injury won this final. In 1979 he had experienced in Tbilisi ever had a similar accident when he hit the high dive with the head and then remained unconscious for 20 minutes.

In addition to the four Olympic victories he won five world titles, 47 national titles and won six titles in the Pan-American Games. In 1993 he was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the international swimming sport. With its five world titles, he is in the Guinness Book of World Records lists ( 2009, 2010, " Water Diving - Most world titles ").

In 1993 he celebrated his 33rd birthday with a spectacular party, because he believed that the next year will not survive. In 1994, Greg Louganis known officially to his homosexuality and announced that he was infected in 1988 with the HIV virus; of the infection, he knew only a few weeks before the Olympic Games in Seoul in 1988 Because of the then state of knowledge of a large part of the population he had concealed it, even against the doctor who had treated him after his fall at the pool without gloves.; a later test result of the doctor was negative.

Since then Louganis sets itself as an ambassador of the Gay Games for the eradication of discrimination against homosexual athletes and is active as an Aids activist. After ending his active sporting career worked Greg Louganis, especially as an actor and dancer in film and theater as well as an author. He co-wrote with Eric Marcus 's autobiography Breaking The Surface, which spent 5 weeks number one on the New York Times Best Seller list. This was in 1996 under the title Breaking the Surface: The Greg Louganis Story filmed (German title: leap into the unknown ). In addition, he worked as a dog trainer, also wrote a book about it and took part in agility competitions.

Since November 2010 he has been coach at SoCal Divers ( " South California Divers " ), where he is pursuing a modular step -by-step philosophy, in contrast to other coaches who aim primarily at acrobatics.

Louganis is married to the paralegal Johnny Chaillot.