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Paperback
Publisher: Wiley
Mark Tewksbury is best known as a gold-medal-winning Olympic swimmer. His remarkable sixteen-year athletic career included three Olympic medals, numerous world records, and inductions into three major halls of fame: the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame, the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame, and the International Swimming Hall of Fame. Although retired as an athlete, Tewksbury remains a highly respected public figure. He delivered prized swimming analysis for the CBC from the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, hosts the Discovery Channel's popular How It's Made show, and is Co-President of the first World Outgames, Montreal 2006. Tewksbury has spoken to millions as part of his eighteen-year speaking career and remains much in demand as an inspirational speaker to companies and organizations around the world. For his active humanitarianism, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Western Ontario in 2001, and in 2005 Tewksbury was awarded the International Person of the Year Award at S?o Paulo Pride in Brazil. He currently lives in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. For more on Mark Tewksbury, please visit www.MarkTewksbury.com
"To reach the pinnacle of Olympic Swimming takes incredible dedication, resilience and courage that few possess. To reach your true self takes these attributes and a great deal more courage so, therefore, even fewer arrive at this point in their lives. Mark Tewksbury is one of these courageous people who achieve so much and through pain, suffering, daring, and pure fight, become who they truly are, inside and out."
--Duncan Armstrong O.A.M., Australian Olympic Swimming Legend
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| Life as a Gay Olympian |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Inside Out - Straight Talk from a Gay Jock chronicles the challenges and rewards of Olympian Gold Medalist Mark Tewksbury's life as a gay Olympic athlete. There are two stories in this book - the story of the gay athlete, and the story of rampant corruption of the IOC and illegal drug use by athletes prevalent in the Olympics at that time.
As Tewksbury worked toward his Olympic dream, it became harder and harder to suppress his identity. In order to reach that dream, it was necessary. Sponsorship for a medal contender required signing a morality clause. Inside he felt constrained and deceitful; he was not out to his teammates or competitors.
Following his gold medal in Barcelona, rumors that he was gay arose based on a Canadian tabloid article. His agent, while aware, never asked Mark. He denied the rumor, threatening to sue the publication, but nothing ever came of it. But Tewksbury's inner sense of self was suffering more and more.
While at University in Sydney, Australia, Mark outed himself via his senior paper. Sharing his experience as a gay athlete in a masculine sport won him an Academic Achievement award, and largely freed him of the internalized homophobia that had kept him closeted for years.
Then he and a few other athletes organized Olympic Athletes Together Honorably (OATH). Their goal was to force the IOC to live up to their professed mission. OATH managed - against fierce opposition from the IOC - to engage much of the world in this issue.
No longer welcome in the IOC, Tewksbury went on to engage with the Gay Games, then helped found the World OutGames, both developing world-class competition between gay athletes. During this period, he discovered that several of his competitors were also gay - and had been equally closeted during their most competitive years.
Interesting and very well written, this book relates one man's overcoming of his personal demons on the way to a satisfying and successful life. A good read.
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| Needs a bit of work |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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The book starts out smoothly but as the chapters progress the bio/story line becomes a bit fragmented and choppy. Towards the end it seems more like a gossipy he-said she-said tabloid style pitch than a fact-based level headed story. He did reveal some very interesting info about the entrenched Olympic game culture and the extent of homophobia found in that industry and nationwide. Overall: Amusing at times, but the author (Mark Tewksbury) seems a bit flighty and indecisive, and is not the stalwart masculine rock of a man that I was hoping to read about.
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| Amazing Transformation |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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The cover photos on Mark Tewksbury's autobiographical Inside Out: Straight Talk From a Gay Jock are incredibly masculine. The handsome face on the front, the sexy, virile body on the back, the flexed arm holding a fistful of Olympic medals. So it's quite a shock to discover that as a boy, Tewksbury loved to dress up in his grandmother's clothes, and that, like so many of us, he was teased and taunted as a fag in high schoo.
How does a man make such a transformation? Tewksbury eloquently sums up his ability to win Olympic gold in the 1992 Olympics this way: "I gazed around the room slowly. The best swimmers from Russia, Cuba, the United States, Spain, Germany and France were in front of me. And I was different. I was the fag. And in that moment I owned my truth completely. I thought, `If these guys knew how hard it was for me to get here, they wouldn't believe it. They have no bloody clue what I have been through. Or how strong I am.'"
Those sentiments enabled him to succeed. "I went out and swam, dropping more than 1.2 seconds from my personal best... to win the first gold medal for Canada in Barcelona."
The book is an interesting mix of evasiveness and the titular "straight talk." Tewksbury is open about his long-term relationship with a gay couple, as well as his pursuit of a paid escort. There's a lot that remains unsaid, though he's frank about the depression that struck after his Olympic win, closely tied to his own internalized homophobia.
The biggest accomplishment of this book is its ability to present Mark Tewksbury as a real person--not just a sexy hunk or an Olympic idol. Though he's not yet forty, he (and his country) have come a long way since he won that gold medal.
Neil Plakcy, author of Mahu Surfer: A Hawaiian Mystery (An Alyson Mystery)
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| Plain-spoken but involving memoir of a gay athlete |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Decades after Dave Kopay's ground-breaking autobiography, there still are very few elite athletes who have been willing to come out of the closet. Therefore, Mark Tewksbury's memoir gains an automatic interest. Tewksbury, a 1992 Olympic gold medalist in the backstroke (he upset favored American Jeff Rouse), does not focus a great deal in "Inside Out" on this triumph, at least in part because he has already penned a book on that topic, but mostly because he wants to focus on what he views as more essential subjects. He talks of his family and his generally unhappy childhood, his early same-sex crushes, his fear of exposure both before and especially after his rise to the highest rank of his sport, all to frequently moving effect. His accounts of his foray within the international Olympic movement, and later involvement with the nascent Gay Games, offer fascinating glimpses into the politics and intrigue of big-time sports.
All this may seem like a lot to stuff into a relatively short book, and in fact, it is. Tewksbury, who on the evidence is a decent writer, spends so much time recounting events that there is not much time for atmosphere or reflection, though one might take this as an accurate conveyance of what frequently seems to be a frantic, fast-paced life. When he does pause to talk about his emotions his plain style is genuinely touching, as in his account of his father's death from cancer. Though one may wonder just how hard a skilled athlete with a strapping physique and dazzling smile (evident in many of the photos, though the beefcake element is kept low-key), not to mention a gift for public speaking, could possibly have it, Tewksbury's willingness to reveal his inner anguish and vulnerability cannot fail to touch the reader. Until such time as the world of sport comes to terms with the sexual orientation of some of its greatest representatives books such as "Inside Out" will be necessary.
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| Good Book but why not do one on someone that came out before they were big |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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This was a really good book. I really enjoyed the part about Mark's experience with being on the various committees and his speaking career. It was interesting to read something about an athlete who talked about other things he did besides just performing the sport itself.
I wish an athlete would write a book that came out before or during his participation in the sport instead of after. While I still have a lot of respect for people like Mark who come out, they have already won the medals and made their cash, so they really aren't risking their careers any longer.
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