"I needed to do this now, for me": Olympic hero Dame Kelly Holmes comes out as gay

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

British Olympic hero Dame Kelly Holmes has revealed she is gay. Kelly, who won two golds at the 2004 games in Athens, has told how she lived a 'secret life' for 34 years.

In an exclusive interview with The Mirror, she said: "There have been lots of dark times where I wished I could scream that I am gay – but I couldn’t." She has decided to come out during Pride Month, which celebrates LGBTQ+ communities.

"I needed to do this now, for me," she explained. "It was my decision. I’m nervous about saying it. I feel like I’m going to explode with excitement.

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"Sometimes I cry with relief. The moment this comes out, I’m essentially getting rid of that fear."

Kelly, who was made a Dame in 2005, revealed how she realised she was gay after kissing a fellow soldier when she was 17. She was forced into silence amid fears of being prosecuted, at a time when homosexuals were banned from the Armed Forces.

"I was convinced throughout my whole life that if I admitted to being gay in the Army I’d still be in trouble," she said. Family and close friends have known for years that Kelly is gay.

She has a partner and, while she doesn’t want to give details, she said: "It’s the first time I’ve had someone who I don’t introduce as a PA or friend."

Of previous partners, she added: "No disrespect to them, but the relationships have only been a small part of my life. They haven’t been in this fearful world with me for 34 years.

"It was an era where the stigma of homosexuality was really bad because of the AIDS epidemic. I didn’t have any role models in anything like that.

"And back then, school sex education was nothing to do with being gay.”

Things changed after she joined the