If You are gay and Re-Addicted to The Olympics Matthew Mitcham Could be The Culprit

 There are only three openly gay Olympics Athletes participating in London--I'll do more on them and the Lesbian Olympicans another time. But I will admit Matthew Mitcham has always been one of my favorites. It's been a real joy watching him grow up from a distance.  Here's more about what he's bring to his game.  According to SMH:

If Matthew Mitcham manages to defend his Olympic title in London, he will credit the work he has done on the couch as much as on the diving block.

Weekly — sometimes twice weekly — appointments with a psychologist for more than a year have led the 24-year-old Beijing gold medallist out of a rut and back into medal contention for the London Games. The champion from Beijing is calling himself the underdog. All the pressure, Mitcham says, is on Britain's Tom Daley and a Chinese contingent striving for an eighth medal in the sport.

Preparing to repeat his feat in China in the 10-metre platform four years ago, Mitcham speaks unselfconsciously about how, for a period, he didn't think he'd even make it to London after losing what he termed as an ''addiction'' to the Olympic quest. With that phase behind him, and with the guidance of experts, it could be said he has entered a healthy relapse. Addicted once again to the pursuit of being world's best, Mitcham feels like a more evolved person at his second Games and thinks he is a better athlete for it.

''It has been a massive part of my preparation, actually, I've been seeing a sports psychologist once or twice weekly for more than a year now,'' he said.

''Working on many, many different aspects of not even just competition psychology but other areas of my life as well. You can't just compartmentalise sport from the rest of your life.

''I've been working on getting a balance between the social life, the sports side of things, just the whole mental, physical and emotional relationship just to do a lot of personal development. I'm a much more mature, stable, grounded person.''

Last year was particularly challenging for Mitcham after an abdominal injury kept him out of action for much of it. When he couldn't work on his body he worked on his mind. ''I was pondering ... whether or not it was worth continuing to push and continue to damage myself and get through all this pain and heartache and potentially set myself up for failure,'' he said.
''While sport is just sport, and you could debate how influential it is on the bigger things in life like poverty and hunger, I don't know how much difference it does make, but it certainly does make people very, very happy.
''Once I actually started diving well and I realised the potential that I still had it made me really hungry for it again and it made it really important for me to actually make it.


"I think the catalyst for that was my own improvement in my own perception of how I was going. Because I set myself at such a high standard because of how I did last Olympics I felt like if I didn't think I was a chance of winning the next the Olympics there was no point in me going. When I was injured and I felt quite debilitated I didn't feel like I was a chance of winning any more so I had lost that desire and that passion to want to go to the Olympics.

"Then, as I started to improve, and I started diving well again and I started seeing my potential again, that's when that passion was rekindled for me.

''With the lead-up into these Games and all the struggles that I've been going through with the physical side of things and all that, I had pretty much decided that this was going to be my last Olympic Games, but as soon as I got here that has all gone out the window.''