It was at that point that Curry went on record to discuss his homosexuality and his declining health.Ĭurry succumbed to an AIDS-related heart attack in April of 1994. In 1976, a German tabloid newspaper, Bild-Zeitung, outed British figure skater John Curry prior to the World Championships, though that didn't deter Curry from winning the event.Ĭurry's sexual orientation wasn't more widely discussed until the 1990s, after Curry's previously contracted case of HIV turned into AIDS. Not all gay athletes have had the privilege of coming out on their own terms. Nine years later, shortly after Jerry Smith's AIDS-related death, Kopay revealed that he had shared a sexual encounter with Smith. In 1977, Kopay wrote The David Kopay Story: An Extraordinary Self-Revelation, in which he discussed his life as a gay man as well as the prevalence of homophobia in football. He then disclosed his own sexuality to Rosellini, without outing Smith, who had preferred to stay silent. Kopay presumed the source to be Jerry Smith, a teammate with the Washington Redskins with whom he'd shared a brief affair, and he was distraught by the hate mail that poured into The Star after the article had been published.
In 1975, Kopay-who had retired from the NFL in 1972 following a nine-year career as a running back for five different teams-came out publicly to Lynn Rosellini of The Washington Star after Rosellini had published an article quoting an unnamed player about the trials and tribulations of being a homosexual in professional sports. Note: A special "thank you" to Outsports, whose thoroughly detailed list of the " 100 Most Important Moments in LGBT-Sports History" served as a key reference for this article.īefore Jason Collins was born, David Kopay, a fellow former prep star from the San Fernando Valley, blazed the trail for Collins by becoming the first professional athlete, active or retired, to come out.
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