Matthew Mitcham OAM (b. 1988) won gold in the 10m platform diving event at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, becoming the first out gay athlete to win an individual Olympic gold medal. Originally a trampolinist, Brisbane-born Mitcham competed at the World Junior Championships in 1999 and 2001 and won the double mini-tramp event. Spotted by an Australian Institute of Sport diving coach, he began diving training while continuing his trampolining. He won a number of national junior diving titles between 2002 and 2004, won his first senior national title in 2005 and in 2006 represented Australia in three events at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. In 2008 he won the 1m, 3m and 10m individual events at the Australian National Championships and at the Diving Grand Prix in Florida. In Beijing he fared poorly in the 3m springboard event, and entered the final round of the 10m in second place, 34 points behind. With his final dive, however, Mitcham earned the then highest single-dive score in Olympic history and became the first Australian male to win an Olympic gold medal in diving since 1924. Mitcham was one of fewer than a dozen openly gay athletes in Beijing, out of a total of approximately 11,000 competitors. His 2012 autobiography Twists and Turns described his many vicissitudes, including battles with depression and alcohol abuse, and the recreational drug use which almost derailed his athletic career. The book was subsequently adapted into a cabaret show, performed by Mitcham himself for Fringe World, Perth and the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardis Gras festival in 2015. He was a finalist on Dancing with the Stars that year, and his second stage show, Under the Covers, premiered in 2017. He was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 2020 and the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 2022.
Ross Watson's portrait of Mitcham is from Classic de Novo, a series of paintings in which sitters including dancer Marco Da Silva, Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears, retired High Court Judge Michael Kirby and AFL footballer Paul Licuria are inserted into paintings by artists such as Caravaggio, Vermeer and Jacob van Ruisdael. Mitcham appears in the series twice: in a reworking of Caravaggio's famous Boy with a basket of fruit; and in this variation on Sebastiano Ricci's The fall of Phaeton, in which Phaeton, son of the sun-God Helios, tumbles from his father's chariot. Watson's work is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria and many private collections, notably that of Sir Elton John, whose early support encouraged the artist.
Gift of the artist 2010. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
© Ross Watson
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