Greg Louganis wasn’t supposed to compete at the 1988 Olympics. The superstar athlete, dubbed the “Baryshnikov of diving,” had originally planned on retiring after earning two gold medals in Los Angeles in 1984, to go along with the silver he won in Montreal in ’76. It didn't bode well in Seoul when, during a routine dive during the preliminaries, he hit his head on the board — a potentially catastrophic injury that killed a fellow diver five years before. He had also, unknown to the rest of the world, recently learned he was HIV-positive. Louganis was 28 years old and had every reason to believe he wouldn’t make it to 30.
“I was told, ‘Get your affairs in order, because chances are, you probably only have two more years to live,’” the now 64-year-old Louganis recalls during a lengthy recent conversation over Zoom. Even when speaking of serious things, Louganis remains boyishly energetic, smiling beneath a portrait of him with his dogs while the pets bark insistently for his attention. But there’s a gravitas to him as well. He’s now lived far more years with his HIV diagnosis than he had before it, and he’s still learning what his lengthy second chance means.
