Heath Thorpe recently competed with Team Australia against New Zealand at the 2023 Oceanic Championships. His team won the competition, and are qualified to compete at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships 2023, which will be held in Belgium later this year.
Heath was born on September 3, 2000, and he currently resides in Sydney, Australia. Aside from being an artistic gymnast, he is also pursuing a degree in Communications at the Queensland University of Technology.
The 22-year-old Australian athlete has been a member of the Men’s Artistic Gymnastics Australian National Squad since 2017, and he represented his country at the 2019 Summer Universiade, where he finished at sixth place.
Moreover, Heath is openly gay, and he publicly came out when he was 18 years old. In a previous interview with SBS News, he opened up about the difficulties that he’s had to overcome in coming to terms with his sexuality, as well as the stereotypes that society has on gymnastics.
“It has been an interesting pathway … I know when I was growing up that I was met with a lot of comments about gymnastics being for girls, or being for gay people.
For me to realize my identity was a bit of struggle, because I had almost not wanted to perpetuate a stereotype that I had been told my whole life. So that was an internal struggle in itself,” the athlete shared.
He added,
“And even so now, I am still one of the only openly gay gymnasts on an international level.”
“It has been quite interesting exploring that and understanding that – especially at a young age. I came out to the media when I was 18 without even necessarily realizing the enormity of it. I think it’s just that a lot of firsts are hard to navigate,” Heath further expressed.
Aside from reigning as 2023 Oceania Champions with the rest of Team Australia, the gymnast is also a gold medalist at thirst traps, and here some of his hot pics to prove it… 😉
Sources: en.wikipedia.org, sbs.com.au
I love that he’s openly gay on an international level.