British Lions rugby legend Gareth Thomas: 'It's ended my marriage and nearly driven me to suicide. Now it's time to tell the world the truth - I'm gay'



Gareth Thomas is a sporting legend. He captained Wales in 2005 to their first Grand Slam victory since 1978. The same year he captained the British Lions tour of New Zealand.



With 100 caps to his name - more than any other player in Welsh history - he has one of the fiercest reputations on the field, and a row of missing front teeth to prove it.

At 6ft 3in and 16st of pure muscle, his masculinity has always been an absolute given.

As a young man he bonded with rugby mates in the pub over tales of sexual conquests, and flirted with pretty girls eager to bag a sporting hero.

Living a lie: Gareth Thomas pictured with wife and teenage sweetheart Jemma before their marriage ended in 2006

After his marriage in 2002 to teenage sweetheart Jemma - the woman he called his 'rock' - he spoke movingly of their desire to become parents and the heartbreak of her suffering three miscarriages.

And if anyone dared to suggest he was anything other than 100 per cent straight, Gareth 'Alfie' Thomas was prepared to make them see the error of their ways. With his fists, if necessary.

But, as he admits in the Daily Mail today, it was all a pretence, a fragile artifice - and one which came crashing down around his ears on November 4, 2006, following a Wales game in Cardiff.

Breaking down in tears in the changing rooms of the Millennium Stadium, Gareth finally realised he could not go on living a lie. Keeping his true sexuality a secret was destroying him.



That secret, which he'd kept hidden his entire career, was - he admits now - 'like a tight knot in my stomach, always threatening to seep out'.



He says: 'I was like a ticking bomb. I thought I could suppress it, keep it locked away in some dark corner of myself, but I couldn't.



'It was who I was, and I just couldn't ignore it any more.



'I'd been through every emotion under the sun trying to deal with this.

'You wake up one morning thinking: "I can handle it. Everything is fine," and the next morning you don't want anyone to see your face, because you think that if people look at you, they will know.'

That summer, he had confessed the truth to his devastated wife Jemma, unable to cope with the guilt of deceiving her.



But even as their marriage crumbled, he'd somehow hoped to maintain his charade for the rest of the world.

'My life seemed to be falling apart. Jemma and I were splitting up, and I was scared of the future and being single again as a gay man,' says Gareth, 35.

'A coach named Scott Johnson, a great man, came up to me in the dressing room after the game for a chat and I just broke down in tears.

'He said: "What's up?" 'I said: "Me and Jemma have split," and he said: "Oh no, what's happened?" Then he said: "I know what's happened, I know what it is."'

Somehow, the coach had guessed.

Secret: Gareth has won 100 caps for Wales and captained his country to the Grand Slam and the British Lions

'He took me out of the team room to the medical room, locked the door and I told him everything. After keeping it secret for so long, I felt a huge rush of relief.

'Scott said: "Right, I've got to speak now to three or four players in the Welsh team because you need the boys to surround you and support you. You can't cope with this on your own," and he was right.

'He told two of my team-mates, Stephen Jones and Martyn Williams, and as I sat in the bar waiting for them, I was absolutely terrified, wondering what they were going to say.



'But they came in, patted me on the back and said: "We don't care. Why didn't you tell us before?"

'Two of my best mates in rugby didn't even blink an eyelid. Martyn said he never had a clue, would never have thought it.

'I felt everyone was protecting me and closing in tight around me. No one distanced themselves from me, not one single person.'

Since that confession to his closest circle of friends three years ago, Gareth says his team-mates at his club, the Cardiff Blues, now know - and apparently don't care.

Today, however, he has taken the remarkable decision to go public. It's his choice. No one has forced his hand.

He just feels attitudes have changed and the time is right for sport to start accepting openly gay people in the same way other professions have in recent years.

Also, a big supporter of the NSPCC, he doesn't want desperate young people confused over their sexuality, or worried about any other issue, to suffer in silence, as he did for almost 20 years, too terrified to tell anyone.

The number of boys calling ChildLine about their sexuality has increased to 3,500 a year.

'I've been through all sorts of emotions with this, tears, anger and absolute despair,' he says.

'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.



'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.

'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.

'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.'

Attitudes were very different when Gareth, a postman's son, started his professional career with Bridgend as a teenager.

Sometimes I felt so alone and depressed. I've stood on so many cliff edges

He believes that had he been openly gay back then, he would never have reached rugby's highest echelons.

'It is the toughest, most macho of male sports, and with that comes an image,' he says.

'In many ways, it is barbaric, and I could never have come out without first establishing myself and earning respect as a player.

'Rugby was my passion, my whole life, and I wasn't prepared to risk losing everything I loved.'

Not that he was prepared, initially, to accept that he was gay - despite realising, aged 17, that he didn't feel attracted to women in the same way that his mates were.

He had girlfriends, experimented sexually, but ultimately avoided intimacy.

'When I was 16 or 17 I knew I was gay, but knowing and accepting are two very different things.

'I could never accept it because I knew I would never be accepted as a gay man and still achieve what I wanted to achieve in the game.

'I would play along with the other lads. I had all the chit-chat. I knew which girls to flirt with, which girls to say were nice, which ones to say weren't.

'I'd make up stories about sexual conquests to fit in.

'I became a master of disguise and could play the straight man down to a tee, sometimes over-compensating by getting into fights or being overly aggressive because I didn't want the real me to be found out.

'So I created this alter ego, knowing full well that I was living in my little fantasy bubble, my shell.



'But when you withdraw into yourself you start to feel lonely, upset, ashamed. You create this inner world which is dark.

'I was never ever attracted to any of my rugby mates; I was really good at switching off my emotions and I wouldn't have even considered crossing that line.

'My biggest fear was that if my rugby mates knew, they'd all think I fancied them and reject me.

'If anything, rugby was my saviour. On the pitch I could forget who I was, escape all the confusion,' says Gareth, who retired from international rugby in 2007 but plans to continue playing with the Cardiff Blues for as long as he can.

Break up: The divorce between Gareth and Jemma will soon be finalised, but he says they are still in love with each other and remain friends

Gareth's first gay sexual encounter was with a male, non-rugby-playing friend, when he was 18, a one-off encounter which left him feeling ashamed and frightened.

'At the time it felt right, but afterwards it felt wrong and I promised myself it would never happen again,' he says.

'I just completely denied everything. Everything I wasn't supposed to think or feel went through a trap door in my mind and was forgotten.

'I used to hope that I would wake up one morning, all these feelings would be gone and I'd be like the rest of them, be one of the boys without having to pretend.

'I used to pray constantly and ask God: "You have given me this great talent to play rugby. There must be some kind of answer." But there wasn't one.'

It was at a friend's 18th birthday party that Gareth met his future wife Jemma.

'The craziest thing about Jemma is that I genuinely did love her. She was the nicest, most caring, understanding, prettiest girl I had ever met,' he says.

'It was such a confusing time because I had amazingly strong feelings for her, yet I knew I had taken who I was and put it in a little ball and pushed it in a corner.

'She took all of me, except that little ball, which was waiting to leak out at any time.



'Because I liked and loved Jemma so much, when we got really close, I felt: "Wow, this is really great!"

'I wanted to make love to her because of my feelings for her. It wouldn't have mattered to me if she was a man, a woman or an alien.'

The relationship, however, was on-off for a long time before their church wedding in the pretty village of St Brides Major, near Bridgend, in 2002.



Gareth says this was not only because international rugby took him away for long stretches of time and required total commitment, but also because he was struggling to contain his sexuality.

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.

He admits that occasionally, during their 'off' periods, he gave into his urges and secretly met men, afterwards hating himself for doing so and repressing his sexuality again - a destructive cycle which would repeat itself throughout his career.

'It's so difficult to be so close to someone, and every day tell them that you love them and hear them say they love you, knowing the words were true, but also knowing that the real me wanted to take over,' he says.

Knowing he might be gay, and having had secret sexual encounters with other men during their on-off courtship, was it fair to ask Jemma to marry him?

Now that he has finally accepted who he is, Gareth is consumed with guilt over the upset he caused her.

They separated in late 2006 and their divorce is soon to be finalised.



Jemma now lives in Spain where she works as an accountant. But they remain friends and he says they still love each other.

'I don't regret the marriage. I hope I have good years to come, but I had some of the most fantastic years of my life with Jemma.

'Our wedding day was brilliant. I loved it. Jemma was stunning and I was so very happy.



'I took those vows seriously and I wouldn't have married her if I hadn't thought I could make a go of being the perfect husband.'

Did he not have cold feet at all, though?



Gareth says: 'I wanted to get married. We went to church together every week and I used to pray as hard as I could.

'I would say to God: "I have Jemma, I love her. Please take away these feelings that I have."

'I really wanted this marriage to be for the rest of my life, and I felt confident I could keep this other part of me locked away indefinitely.

'I still felt attracted to other men, but I squashed those feelings. I decided I could accept the attraction, provided I never did anything about it.'

Changed: Gareth holds the 2005 Six Nations trophy with Michael Owen. Now retired from international rugby, he hopes to continue playing for Cardiff for as long as he can

This, however, would prove to be impossible for Gareth.



His love for Jemma did not rid him of these urges, and when he was playing away fixtures near London, he would more often than not be drawn to gay bars and clubs after the games.

'I loved Jemma to bits, she was my wife, I would have died for her, but keeping this secret was driving me crazy,' he says.

'It felt as if I had a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other.



'One would be saying to me, as I stood outside a gay bar: "Go on in and have a look," while the good one would be saying: "No, don't do it!"

'If I walked in, there would always be an element of fear. I would wonder who I was going to bump into, who was going to see me?' says Gareth, who insists he always practised safe sex.

'Cheating on Jemma made me feel horrible and guilty. Every time it happened, I promised myself "never again", but it was something I felt I needed to do to survive.



'I felt that if I didn't give in, it would be more destructive to me and Jemma.



'Sometimes I felt so alone and depressed. I've stood on so many cliff edges.



'I used to go to the cliffs overlooking the beach near our cottage in St Brides Major and just think about jumping off and ending it all.

'It's a lot easier to think: "If I haven't got to open my eyes, then I don't have to worry. If I don't have to think about it, then I don't have any pain."



'But I could never have done it. It was like a cry for help. I didn't have the guts and I loved my life, my rugby and my family too much.

'But just thinking about it helped, got it out of my system.



'Sometimes I'd think: "I don't want to be like this. I want to kill myself." Then the reality hits home.

'It wasn't that I really wanted to die, I just wanted everything to be different, for it all to go away.'

The craziest thing about Jemma is that I genuinely did love her. She was the nicest, most caring, understanding, prettiest girl I had ever met

Despite believing his father Barry, 60, mother Yvonne, 61, and older brothers Steven, 40, and Richard, 37, would love and accept him no matter what, he found it impossible to confide in them.

'To tell them I was gay would have been to accept the reality,' says Gareth, 'and I wasn't ready for that.



'Sometimes it's hardest to speak to those closest to you.'

It was in 2006, however, that Gareth's life completely unravelled.

Having moved in 2004 from Bridgend to Celtic Warriors and then to the French Club Toulouse, Gareth should have been on a high after 2005's stunning sporting triumphs, which included winning the Heineken Cup.

Instead, he became caught up in the controversy surrounding the sudden departure of the Wales national coach, and stood accused of leading a player revolt.

Hours after appearing in a heated television discussion to defend his team against charges of ' player-power', Gareth - having been previously injured in a match with his French club - collapsed from a ruptured artery and suffered a ministroke.

A few weeks later, his wife Jemma suffered her third miscarriage.



Not long after this, he realised he could no longer carry the burden of his secret and confessed to his wife at their home in France.

'I was changing, getting more and more pent-up. I loved Jemma, but not 100 per cent, and I just felt she deserved better. It wasn't fair on her,' he says.



'One night, on impulse, I just said: "I can't lie to you any more, and I've got to tell you that I'm gay."

'She is the nicest person in the world and tried to be understanding, but of course she was angry and upset. We were both in tears.

'I suffer every day now knowing how much I hurt her saying it, but I think it was best in the long run: I'm gay and she had to know.



'I told her I was sorry and I still apologise now.



'I still love her to the depth of my bones. She's an amazing woman.



'We had some of the best years together, but I feel guilty that if I had never married Jemma, she might have met someone else who might still be with her.

'At first, we both felt we couldn't just walk away from each other, and there was a part of us which wondered if we could carry on as man and wife.



'But over a three-month period we gradually drifted apart and Jemma went back to Wales.

'I think she would have felt a lot more pain if it had been another woman. She could have thought: "What's wrong with me? What could I not give you?"



'But because I was gay and was attracted to men, she knew it was nothing she'd ever be able to change.'

So now Gareth is single and free to date whomever he pleases without fear of being 'outed'.



He says he feels like a teenager again, re-living his youth, discovering who he really is.

He hopes, now that he has gone public, he can still go out with male friends without people assuming he's with a lover.



'Just because you are gay, doesn't mean you fancy every man who walks the planet,' he says.

'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.

'It's pretty tough for me being the only international rugby player prepared to break the taboo.

'Statistically I can't be the only one, but I'm not aware of any other gay player still in the game.



'I'd love for it, in ten years' time, not to even be an issue in sport, and for people to say: "So what?" '

• Childline, 0800 11 11, is free and confidential.

