Out at the Olympics.

Platform diver Patrick Jeffrey reveals what it felt like to be on the inside of the '96 Summer Games as an out gay athlete

When Patrick Jeffrey walked purposefully to the edge of the diving platform last summer in Atlanta, the buffed and bronzed 31-year-old was fully aware it was his final competition as an Olympic athlete. That meant it was also the last chance for Jeffrey, a five-time national champion, to bring home an Olympic medal as the exclamation point for his 20-year diving career.

"I knew if I dived well, I could win," he recalls. "But I just focused on being calm and enjoying the experience. I just wanted to put myself in a position where I had a chance."

Such a Zen approach doesn't come easily. But Jeffrey says he was able to put the pressure in perspective, thanks in part to the inner strength he developed during the process of coming to grips with being a gay man.

He dived solidly, finishing a respectable ninth but well out of medal contention. Yet today there is no remorse, no wondering about what might have been. Instead he focuses on who he is and the considerable things he's accomplished.

"I just want to live my life and feel good about who I am," he says. "I think by doing that - by shedding all the bullshit I've been fed all my life about who I'm supposed to be and getting down to the root of who I am - I become a better person and a more useful person to the entire community, the gay community included."

Jeffrey is one of a growing number of high-profile out athletes who made news in 1996. Figure skater Rudy Galindo became that sport's first openly gay champion last January after winning the men's national title. And Muffin Spencer-Devlin broke ground last March as the first openly lesbian player on the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour.

In each case these newly out gay athletes met with a surprising lack of resistance in their respective sports. But that may reflect their own level of comfort in being public about their orientation, none more impressive than Jeffrey's.

Jeffrey's interest in diving began at age 11 at a Madison, N.J., community pool. A friend was trying out for the local diving team, and young Patrick decided to go along. "I really loved it," he says. "I was pretty good at it right away." It didn't take long for others to take notice of Jeffrey's talent. His high school career was punctuated by a steady drumbeat of victories, culminating in his first national championship during his senior year.

Universities quickly came calling. Of the 12 schools that offered him scholarships, he chose Ohio State, where his winning continued. In 1988, his senior year at college, he became the first and only diver to win three National Collegiate Athletic Association titles in one year: ten-meter platform, one-meter springboard, and three-meter springboard.

That was the same year he first made the U.S. Olympic team, diving alongside Greg Louganis in Seoul, South Korea. In the first of two major Olympic disappointments, Jeffrey contracted the flu only days before the games began. During preliminaries he dived with a 101-degree fever but somehow still made the finals. Weak and nervous, he finished 12th overall.

Though he already was well aware of his sexual orientation, Jeffrey was far from out. Louganis was in the same situation, but others on the team had long since figured out his secret.

"Knowing what I know now [regarding Louganis's HIV infection], I realize Greg was dealing with a lot," says Jeffrey. "I think if he could have been more available, it could have helped me. But I don't blame him. He needed to do for himself. People said things about him, and I defended him a lot. But Greg was very focused on what he was doing and very isolated."

It was around the 1988 games that Jeffrey began to experience serious anxiety over his being gay and the pressure to keep it secret. Despite his position as a world-class athlete, he was convinced that his career was only one disclosure from disaster. It didn't help matters that more than half of the 1988 Olympic men's diving team was gay, according to Jeffrey, all of them struggling just as hard as he was to remain in the closet.

Nor did watching the abuse that was often heaped on Louganis. At one national competition two women divers bought a gerbil, tied its legs with string, and stuffed it in Louganis's diving bag, Jeffrey says. When Louganis reached for his chamois - during the three-meter finals-out came the gerbil. "They thought it was funny," says Jeffrey. "They were young and stupid. They've thought about it since then."

As bad as that incident was, it paled beside the treatment male divers reserved for Louganis. When Louganis failed to win in any given competition, a rare occasion in the '80s and early '90s, the winner was said to have joined the BTF - Beat the Faggot - Club. When Jeffrey bested Louganis at one such competition, a friend congratulated him on making the club. Jeffrey was horrified but felt he could say nothing.

"I felt like a fake," he says. "I was very homophobic at the time, which is not a good thing for a gay man to be," he adds, laughing at the memory. "Being in a situation where you're afraid of who you are and having a spotlight put on you can be a very anxiety-filled experience. You feel like people can see right through you. I had been working all my life to build this facade in case that moment came, and I just felt it had become transparent."

His response was to redouble his efforts in training. He moved to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to train with Louganis's coach, Ron O'Brien, and spent the next three years adhering to the legendarily tough O'Brien regimen. His commitment often drove him to train even when injuries and fatigue dictated he do otherwise.

"He's a very talented diver," says O'Brien. "He's unusual in the sense that he's almost equally good in the springboard events as in the platform event. Louganis was one of those guys who could do both too. [Jeffrey's] work ethic is very strong. The thing that held him back frequently was injuries. When he was healthy he was a very hard worker."

The national titles began to roll in, beginning in 1991. There would be five in all. And as his diving successes mounted, he also began a personal journey, starting in 1990 to slowly come out in the diving world.

In 1992 he again won the national championship but two months later failed to make the 1992 Olympic team. Distraught, he entered therapy and began to confront the issues he had resisted dealing with for so long.

Last June a renewed and determined Jeffrey won the ten-meter platform Olympic trials in Indianapolis, eight years after making his first Olympic team. Just a few days short of turning 31, well beyond what is considered a diver's prime, he nevertheless finished ahead of teen sensation Troy Dumais, who failed to make the team despite his growing reputation as the next Louganis.

But it quickly became clear that Jeffrey was not the team's only gay member when second-place finisher David Pichler lashed out at his former coaches, O'Brien and his son, Tim O'Brien, at a postcompetition press conference, claiming they had harassed and assaulted him and his lover, Steve Guiffre. Few sports reporters bothered to follow the story except to note the press conference and Pichler's allegations regarding his "companion" or "close male companion."

Pichler has since stayed mostly quiet about the matter, as have the O'Briens, who categorically deny all of Pichler's allegations. U.S. Diving, the sport's governing organization, took no action on a formal complaint Pichler filed against Ron O'Brien, but Tim O'Brien obtained a restraining order preventing Guiffre from coming within 50 feet of any member of the O'Brien family.

Despite the controversy, both gay divers performed respectably in Atlanta, Pichler finishing in sixth place, with Jeffrey three places behind him. For Jeffrey, being gay was no longer something to hide or worry over.

"I'm out," he says. "Everyone in diving knows I'm gay. The judges know, my parents know, my coaches know, my teammates know, my opponents know. I don't seem to be disrespected for who I am. I don't feel I'm judged on my sexuality. And I think it's been good for some of the younger athletes who are gay and who are coming out in their teen years. That makes me feel good. I've tried to be available to talk to them and let them see me for who I am.

"I want to be taken seriously as an athlete, not have others thinking about what I do in bed," Jeffrey continues. "I want them to be focused on what I've worked on for my whole life to do. If people know that Fm gay and it's a 'by the way' thing, that's good. But not as a central issue. The Olympics are about competition, not sexuality."

Six months after the Summer Games, Jeffrey is living in Broward County, Fla., coaching a 40-person diving team and running his decorative paint business. While he stays busy with the latter-often rising at 5 a.m. to tackle the day's work - it's clearly coaching that he finds most rewarding, particularly so when he has the opportunity, as sometimes happens, to help young gay athletes struggling to come to terms with their orientation, "Kids need role models," he says. "Gay youth shouldn't feel they have to deny themselves the right to natural personal growth that each one of us has at birth. I think that's real important. If kids can look at someone like me and say, 'I could handle being like him. He's focused on something serious. And he made something out of himself. Maybe I can do that too,' then everything I've gone through will be worth it."