Greg Louganis

Gregory Efthimios Louganis
Personal information
Nickname (s):	"Greg"
Nationality:	United States
Discipline (s) :	Artistic / tower / synchronized jumping
Society:	University of Miami University of California, Irvine
Birthday:	January 29, 1960
Place of birth:	El Cajon , California
Size:	1.75 cm

Gregory "Greg" Efthimios Louganis (born January 29, 1960 in El Cajon ) is a former American water diver and multiple Olympic and world diving champion .

Born to minor parents, a Swedish mother and a Samoan father, he was adopted by an American family of Greek descent after his birth. He got ballet lessons at an early age and began to practice diving. At the age of 16 he won the silver medal in diving at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal . Two years later he became world champion in this discipline. Due to the boycott of the Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980 , his streak of success was interrupted for the time being. In 1982 he was the first to receive the highest rating with a maximum of 10 points from all seven judges after a 1½ somersault.

At the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles he was double Olympic champion in high diving as well as from the 3-meter board and achieved record marks that had never been achieved before in such events. He was able to repeat this double success four years later, at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul . No other diver before him has achieved this. Spectacular in this context was one of his jumps from the 3-meter board, when he hit the back of his head on the board, had to be sewn and won this final despite the injury. In 1979 he had already experienced a similar accident in Tbilisi when he hit his head while diving and remained unconscious for 20 minutes.

In addition to the four Olympic victories, he won five world championship titles, 47 national championship titles and won six titles at the Pan-American Games. In 1993 he was inducted into the international swimming pool 's hall of fame . With his five world championship titles he is listed in the Guinness Book of Records (2009, 2010, "Diving - most world championship titles").

In 1993 he celebrated his 33rd birthday with a spectacular party, believing that he would not survive the next year. In 1994, Greg Louganis officially acknowledged his homosexuality and announced that he had been infected with the HI virus since 1988 ; He knew about the infection a few weeks before the Olympic Games in Seoul in 1988. Due to the knowledge of the majority of the population at the time, he had concealed this from the doctor who had treated him without gloves after his fall in the pelvis; a later test result from the doctor was negative.

Since then Louganis has worked as an ambassador for the Gay Games to reduce discrimination against homosexual athletes and has been active as an AIDS activist. After finishing his active sporting career, Greg Louganis worked mainly as an actor and dancer in film and theater as well as an author . He and Eric Marcus wrote the autobiography Breaking The Surface , which was number one on The New York Times Best Seller list for 5 weeks . This was filmed in 1996 under the title Breaking the Surface: The Greg Louganis Story (English title: Jump into the Unknown ). In addition, he worked as a dog trainer, wrote a book about it and took part in agility competitions.

Since November 2010 he has been a trainer at SoCal Divers (“ So uth Cal ifornia Divers”), where he follows a modular step-by-step philosophy, in contrast to other trainers who mainly focus on acrobatics.

Louganis is married to Legal Assistant Johnny Chaillot.

literature

• Joyce Milton: Greg Louganis: Diving for Gold (Step-Up Biographies) , Random House Books for Young Readers, 1989
• with Eric Marcus , Breaking the Surface , Random House, 1995; Plume, 1996
• with Sikora Siino and Betsy Sikora Siino: For the Life of Your Dog: A Complete Guide to Having a Dog in Your Life from Adoption and Birth, Through Sickness and Health , Pocket Books, 1999

Web links

Commons : Greg Louganis  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Greg Louganis in the International Swimming Hall of Fame (English)
• Official website of Greg Louganis
• Greg Louganis in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Karen Krouse: Louganis Is Back on Board , The New York Times, February 20th 2011
2. ↑ Report on Greg Louganis at the 1988 Summer Olympics
3. ↑ "The miracle Springer Greg Louganis is marked by death," Berliner Zeitung, February 24, 1995, accessed on 16 September 2013
4. ↑ Gay Games Ambasador Greg Louganis ( Memento from March 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive )