Scottish Cycling Champion Comes Out Revealing Struggles With Sexuality Including Two Suicide Attempts

Former world champion cyclist Graeme Obree has come out, revealing how the struggle to accept his sexuality led to two suicide attempts, reports the Press Association. The 45 year old Scottish, who broke the world one-hour distance record in 1993, tells the Scottish Sun “I was brought up thinking you’d be better dead that gay. Being homosexual was so unthinkable that you just wouldn’t be gay. I’d no inking about anything. I just closed down. People say, ‘How can you be gay and be married and have kids and not know it?’ But when I went to my psychologist she reckoned I had the emotional age of about 13 because I’d just closed down.” Obree began conversations about his sexual orientation with a therapist in 2005, coming out to his wife, from whom he is now divorced, his children, and his parents. “It did create a bit of tension,” he says of telling his parents. “My parents have to come to terms with the whole gay thing. It’s been a journey for them. It was difficult and there were lots of tears. It wasn’t easy. But the relationship with my parents has been improved by it. We talked about it and discussed things and we’re a lot happier.”