UPDATED:  

Thorpe admits to journalist Michael Parkinson that he was first pressed by journalists at age 16 about his sexuality.

Parkinson asked, “You’ve always said that you’re not gay… Is all of that true?”

Thorpe replied, “Well, that’s true, but I’ve thought about this for a long time. I’m not straight. And this is only something that very recently, we’re talking in the past 2 weeks, I’ve been comfortable telling the closest people around me.”

Mamamia previously reported: 

It’s the question that has dogged Ian Thorpe for more than a decade and he has finally answered it, confirming that yes, he is gay.

After years of speculation, it is being reported that

the Olympic swimming champion

 made the brave but not entirely unexpected admission to Sir Micheal Parkinson in a tell-all interview, that will be airing on Channel Ten on Sunday night.

The 31-year-old sat down with Parkinson last month, in an interview the veteran interviewer has described as one of the best he’s ever conducted.

It is understood that the interview includes Thorpe’s disclosure that he is gay despite having dated women in the past and how hiding his sexuality impacted on the bouts of depression he has suffered for much of his adult life.

Repeatedly since he became internationally famous as one of the best swimmers the world has ever seen, Thorpe has been questioned about his sexuality and he has always emphatically denied being gay.

His denials never stopped endless rumours and speculative reports about his love life including the time in January 2009 when an Australian media organisation published photographs of him with a male friend at a beach in Brazil. The friend was revealed to be Brazilian swimmer Daniel Mendes who had been Thorpe’s training partner and had reportedly lived with the swimmer as his housemate for three years, according to reports by News Ltd. At the time, Thorpe’s, then manager, David Flaskas was asked by the newspaper to comment on the nature of the relationship between the men and insisted they were simply mates. And there’s every chance they were.

Still, the media were not satisfied and the speculation continued.

This was just another example of the intense level of media intrusion and public interest in his private life that Thorpe has endured since he was a teenager. According to a report in The Guardian in 2012 about his autobiography, This Is Me, which was published that same year:

In his autobiography, he also commented on the frustration he felt at the ongoing speculation about him being gay: “The thing that I find hurtful about it is that people are questioning my integrity and what I say. That’s the only part I find hurtful, that this is something I would be embarrassed about and that I would hide,” Thorpe wrote in his book.

In the past week, since Channel Ten started promoting the interview with a clip of Sir Michael Parkinson asking Thorpe, “Are you gay?” there has been much debate about the relevance of his sexuality and the seemingly unrelenting media obsession with it.

Earlier this week, Mamamia’s Rebecca Sparrow wrote a well recieved and impassioned plea for the speculation to end, arguing it was none of our business whether Ian Thorpe was gay, straight or otherwise.

She wrote:

The Parkinson interview is said to have been brokered by James Erskine who manages both Thorpe and Sir Michael Parkinson. According to News Ltd reports:

The full interview will be broadcast on Network Ten on Sunday Night.

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