British Olympic gold medal-winning runner Kelly Holmes is now claiming that the COVID scare made her realize that she had to reveal to the world that she is a lesbian.
Holmes told the host of a UK podcast that she knew she was gay as far back as 1988, but avoided making her sexual proclivities public knowledge because she was a career soldier in the British Army. Rules were then in place banning gays in the military. Those rules were dropped in the year 2000, but she still felt she needed to stay quiet about herself, Pink News reported.
Her reticence finally ended during the pandemic when the lockdowns forced her to confront her secrecy. She began seeing a therapist, and by 2022, she decided to come out and officially announce she was gay.
“Covid became quite traumatic… I was internalizing those thoughts of ‘I don’t want to live my life like this.'” Holmes told the podcast host.
“I needed to explain why I couldn’t come out because of the army, because a lot of people didn’t know about the army ban,” she added, “nobody knew that that was actually the underlying reason for not coming out.”
The 55-year-old Holmes also insisted that coming out has made her feel “happy for the first time in my life,” and that coming out “changed everything about me.”
The gold medalist has lately been seen in the company of Louise Cullen, a gay sports massage therapist from Northern Ireland.
Holmes won gold for the UK in the 800 and 1500 metres events at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. She also won a bronze medal during the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. She retired from the British Army’s Adjutant General’s Corps in 1997. She was previously a member of the British Army Women’s Royal Army Corps from 1988 to 1992.
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