Rugby star Gareth Thomas today said he hoped he could make a difference to others struggling with their sexuality after disclosing he is gay.
The former Wales international full-back said he was grateful for the “amazing response” he had received after describing his fears of how people would react.
Thomas, Wales’s most-capped player and a former British and Irish Lions captain, said: “I just want to thank everyone for the amazing response I have received, on behalf of me, my family and friends.
“I hope that by saying this I can make a big difference to others in my situation. But for now, I just want to focus on being a rugby player and beating my old club Toulouse.”
Thomas and his team the Cardiff Blues will take on Toulouse in the Heineken Cup later today.
Earlier, in an interview with the Daily Mail, Thomas said the secret of his sexuality was like a “ticking bomb” which he had tried to suppress.
“I just couldn’t ignore it any more,” he told the newspaper.
He said he realised in summer 2006 that he could no longer live a lie.
He told his wife, Jemma, that he was gay and felt like his life was “falling apart” as his four-year marriage broke down.
Thomas said he was “scared of the future and being single again as a gay man”.
The 6ft 3in, 16-stone rugby star said he broke down in tears in the changing rooms of the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, after playing for Wales in November 2006 and later told his secret to coach Scott Johnson.
Thomas said he was frightened about how his team-mates would react but said nobody distanced themselves from him and his family have also stood by him.
The player today received the full backing of both the Welsh Rugby Union and the Cardiff Blues.
Next page: What Roger Lewis said about Alfie
Roger Lewis, WRU group chief executive, said: “Gareth Thomas is one of Welsh rugby’s outstanding players, a former captain, he holds the national appearance record (100 caps) and has scored 40 tries for his country.
“He was at the helm for the 2005 RBS 6 Nations Grand Slam, Wales’ first clean sweep in the annual competition since 1978, and also captained the British and Irish Lions during their summer tour of New Zealand earlier that year.
“Gareth is a rugby leader and also a man of great humour. He is most probably one of the most popular players amongst his peers. He has been an inspiration to generations of rugby followers and continues to play at the top level of the game with the Cardiff Blues.
“Just as we support Gareth at this time that stance will remain consistent for any player.
“Whilst Gareth’s private life is entirely irrelevant to his career as an international sportsman it would be remiss of the WRU not to remind him of the high esteem in which he is held in the game in Wales at a time when he has decided to bring such personal reflections to public notice.”
Robert Norster, Cardiff Blues chief executive, said: “Gareth Thomas is a credit to Cardiff Blues who has truly brought honour to the jersey as a formidable player and a strong leader.
“His private life is his own concern and we will continue to acknowledge him for the qualities he brings to the squad as a player and an individual who exemplifies the values of commitment, determination and fair play we expect from our team.
“Gareth will always be revered for his achievements as a player and he deserves his place of honour in Welsh rugby history.
“Our teams are selected on merit and we will always choose players with the talent and ability to achieve the demanding standards we now set.”
Thomas decided to go public about his sexuality today to “send a positive message” to other gay people, especially young people considering a career in sport.
“It’s been really tough for me, hiding who I really am, and I don’t want it to be like that for the next young person who wants to play rugby, or some frightened young kid,” he said.
Thomas, a supporter of the children’s charity NSPCC, added: “I don’t know if my life is going to be easier because I’m out, but if it helps someone else, if it makes one young lad pick up the phone to Childline, then it will have been worth it.”
Thomas said he knew from the age of 16 or 17 that he was gay but could not accept it and feared it would affect his playing career.
He said he made up stories about girls to fit in with his male friends and felt he was sometimes overly aggressive as he played the straight man.
Thomas, who said he was never attracted to a team-mate, said rugby was his “saviour” as playing allowed him to escape from his personal confusion.
During the interview, Thomas admitted cheating on his wife with male partners and said he considered suicide as he felt so “horrible and guilty”.
He said he still loved his estranged wife, who he describes as “the nicest person in the world”.
Thomas said he did not want to be known as a “gay rugby player” and hoped people would treat his sexuality as “irrelevant”.
“What I choose to do when I close the door at home has nothing to do with what I have achieved in rugby,” he said.
“I’d love for it, in 10 years’ time, not to even be an issue in sport, and for people to say: ’So what?”’
Next page: Does the game care about Alfie's homosexuality?
Delme Parfitt co-wrote Gareth Thomas’ autobiography and is the Welsh journalist who knows him best.
Here he gives a fascinating insight into how the Welsh rugby star’s family life, how he lived with rumours about his sexuality for much of his career – and the impact his decision to reveal all will have on the game in Wales
IN MANY respects, it is the story Welsh rugby has been waiting well over a decade to read – Gareth Thomas: I’m gay.
Ever since the man universally known as Alfie became an international rugby player at the 1995 World Cup, stadium terrace and internet chatroom gossip about the subject has been circulating. Many of his team mates – and of course his close friends and family – have known the truth for years.
Today, among them, there will be admiration, relief even, that he has opted to come out. No need for secrets now. Their surprise, if any, will be in the publicity rather than the news itself.
Most of them have never cared a jot since the day they found out and they include many of the team-mates that have looked up to him down the years, certainly the stalwart figures of his later Wales years and the present Blues squad.
And so you have to wonder, will the game itself care now that we finally know for certain?
Just how will the macho environment of our national sport react to a story that, in Wales, is unprecedented in its nature?
My bet is probably in a more understated and indifferent way than anyone might once have imagined.
There will be catcalls for sure. Whether they come from bigots or mere mischief-makers, Thomas is almost certainly going to have to turn a deaf ear to the odd wolf-whistle, or worse, homophobic insult. Fans of the Blues’ opponents just won’t be able to resist it.
But the truth is, those barbs were already coming his way long before he decided to go public.
And that’s just it. So much of Wales already knew, or at the very least thought they knew. So many minds were already made up, with or without confirmation from the man himself. Yet that didn’t make the conversation in the pub any less worth having.
In the two years or so that I spent ghost-writing his autobiography between 2005 and 2007, I could always guarantee that the first question I would be asked by those I told about the work would be: Well, is he?
Surely never has a nation ever been so obsessed with one man’s sexuality.
Throughout it all though, the respect for Thomas’ 100-caps, his Grand Slam winning leadership of 2005, his Lions captaining exploits of the same year, his Heineken Cup triumph with Toulouse and his sheer hard-as-nails approach to the game, has remained almost entirely undiminished.
We should note that while his revelation is a first for a Welsh rugby player, it is not for the wider arena of sport.
Referee Nigel Owens goes about his business completely unruffled, exuding authority and commanding respect from punters, players and coaches despite having come out years ago.
More recently Irish hurling hero Donal Og Cusack came out amid the traditionally conservative, Catholic environs of the Gaelic Athletic Association. Subsequent reaction was overwhelmingly accepting.
Thomas’ story is more complex though than a straightforward journey towards revealing his true self in the public sphere.
In the summer of 2002 he married long-time girlfriend Jemma. They were together as man and wife for around five years and, in the time I collaborated with him on his book, they were, to me, a picture of wedded bliss.
I travelled to Toulouse in January 2006 to begin work on the project, staying at their house for what was an intense three days of interviewing, given the distance between Cardiff and the south of France.
Jemma worshipped him. That much was clear in virtually every aspect of her behaviour.
By the time I left them, I could do nothing other than conclude that the whole gay business was false tittle-tattle, a tale that had gotten out of control on Welsh rugby’s notoriously imaginative grapevine.
Having seen what I had seen, what else was there to think?
Some months later I felt duty bound to raise the gay issue as being a possible section of the book, such was the strength and proliferation of rumour on the street.
Thomas didn’t appear to mind me mentioning it, but he dismissed the idea of including it out of hand, making clear he didn’t want anything about the subject to be brought up in print.
The intervening years, during which he and Jemma have separated, have clearly seen his outlook change.
Thomas has come back to Wales to play for the Blues and shunned the media spotlight in a way he never found possible in his time as Wales and Lions skipper.
He remains something of an enigma. For all his longevity as one of Wales’ highest profile sports stars, an air of mystery still hovers around him.
Thomas speaks the language of his Bridgend roots and the airs and graces which so often surround others with his record of achievement are refreshingly absent from his personality.
Yet, at the same time, he can be one of the most unreachable people in the game, refusing to return calls or texts for weeks – even months – on end, when he seems to disappear into some sort of parallel universe.
He will do well to resist such anonymity in the immediate future because he should know that as a hit-and-run exercise his decision to come out will lack purpose.
Thomas will want his homosexuality to serve as not just some tawdry tabloid splash, but as an inspiration to anyone fearful of a prejudicial reaction to what they really are.
As much as we may be jolted by a story that is hardly your every day read, we can be certain of one thing – Thomas is far from alone.
While homosexuality is nothing like the social taboo it once was, the testosterone-filled arena of the male dressing room still lags light years behind a more enlightened outside world.
And that’s why others in Thomas’ position prefer to stay in the shadows.
If by placing all this at the forefront of the sporting agenda Thomas wants them to know it is OK to follow his lead, then he has made a start.
But it is only a start, nothing more.
How the reaction in Wales will unfold is impossible to predict with genuine certainty because we have simply never been here before.
All we can do is look to history for indicators, and in the cases of Owens and Cusack there are enough pointers to suggest that choosing the path Thomas has is not the minefield it might once have been.
Let us hope so, because Gareth Thomas being gay, of course, changes nothing.
Rarely has anything been simple with him, but he is, and will always be, one of Wales’ great sporting icons.
Next page: Our earlier story
RUGBY star Gareth Thomas has revealed that he is gay, and said: "I’m proud of who I am."
The former Wales captain finally ended the years of rumours and speculation that have long surrounded his career by confirming his sexuality publicly.
Speaking of the "absolute despair" he had been through in the past, the 100-cap international becomes one of the most senior sportsmen to have come out in public.
The Cardiff Blues player is separated from his wife Jemma.
"I’ve been through all sorts of emotions with this, tears, anger and absolute despair," he told the Daily Mail.
"I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to let people know, and, to be honest, I feel anxious about people’s reactions and the effect it might have on my family.
"It’s been really tough for me, hiding who I really am, and I don’t want it to be like that for the next young person who wants to play rugby, or some frightened young kid."
Thomas – affectionately known by teammates and fans alike as Alfie – has previously said he would give everything he had achieved up for the health of his family, and he said he had their full support.
"My parents, my family and my friends all love me and accept me for who I am, and even if the public are upset by this, I know the love of those people who mean the most to me will never change," he said.
‘I’m not going on a crusade, but I’m proud of who I am. I feel I have achieved everything I could ever possibly have hoped to achieve out of rugby, and I did it being gay.
"I want to send a positive message to other gay people that they can do it, too.
"I don’t want to be known as a gay rugby player. I am a rugby player first and foremost.
"I am a man. I just happen to be gay.
"It’s irrelevant. What I choose to do when I close the door at home has nothing to do with what I have achieved in rugby."
He follows the rugby referee Nigel Owens, who publicly came out in May 2007 to a generally positive reaction. He said he had previously been so tormented he had contemplated suicide.
Thomas, 35, has been followed by rumours and stories about his sexuality ever since becoming an international at the 1995 World Cup, with both terrace and internet gossip speculating about the possibility he was gay.
It is thought, however, that his Wales teammates had long known the truth and been accepting of Thomas’ sexuality.
