Swiss basketball player Marco Lehmann comes out as gay
Swiss basketball star Marco Lehmann has come out as gay, stating that he has been living a painful double life.
In a recent article with FIBA, the official website for the International Basketball Federation, Lehmann opened up about feeling like he wasn’t able to be himself, Pink News reports.
“This is for all the people who do not want to live a double life anymore, those who live in a system where they don’t even exist,” he stated. “This is for the future generations so they can live a free sporting life without hiding. Not gonna lie, this is also for me so I can live free of this burden.”
Now representing Switzerland on the international stage, the 27-year-old 3×3 player has played full-court basketball professionally for over 9 years. Throughout these years, Lehmann has repeatedly stated that he didn’t have a girlfriend because he was much too focused on his career.
Playing for seven seasons across seven countries kept him extremely busy. It was his dedication to the game that has made him the second-best player in Switzerland. However, Lehmann admits that he still was not happy.
“I had been switching personalities for so long now, that it was affecting my mental health”, he reveals.
“Every week the same old thing: my boyfriend would drive me to the airport and the minute I would go through security, the happy gay man in a relationship turned into the emotionless pro-athlete, who didn’t want to talk about his personal life.”
Lehmann gave several examples of the homophobia he’d experienced from coaches and other players, revealing that one coach yelled at the team for “playing like gays. He also recalled a fellow player once describing homosexuality as a “sickness”, while another stated that “[Gays] should kill themselves.” “Imagine you have to play with somebody like this on your team,” says Lehmann.
For a long time he was able to convince himself that he should hide who he was for the sake of the game. Then, in December 2019, it all started to be too much for him.
“I started to have emotional outbursts, tears, cold sweat running down my back. And for what? Just thinking about the next practice,” he stated. “I just couldn’t stand the thought of having to switch from my home personality to my competitive one once more.”
However, Lehmann states that those days are long gone. “I won’t wait ’til I retire to tell you I’m a gay man”, he declares.
“Starting today, I will be Marco Lehmann, gay 3×3 basketball player. And if you’ll excuse me, I’m trying to win the World Tour and take Switzerland to the 2024 Olympics.”
Watch Marco Lehmann’s FIBA interview below!
