Mark Foster has opened up about coming out publicly as gay in a new interview. The former Olympic swimmer appeared on Loose Women to discuss his decision, and admitted that he had been "used to" not sharing his "full self". The 47-year-old explained: "If I look back, I first met my first partner when I was 21 years of age, I was in a relationship for 19 years, then I met somebody else and fell in love with them for seven years. To friends and family, I was out. It took me a long time to tell my mum, a couple of years anyway."
Mark opened up about coming out
He continued: "You get so used to not sharing your full self with people because you're going to be vulnerable, and you're afraid of what people might think, and you're potentially afraid of what the outcome might be regarding work or other bits and pieces. I got used to being Mark the swimmer that stands on the block, trains really hard, breaking world records and win world championships. I never won the Olympics and I'm not saying had I been myself I would have won the Olympics but you just don't know. I was always, was I afraid of being in the limelight a little bit more? Step into the limelight, people will see a little bit more of you."
READ: Rebecca Adlington shares adorable selfie with ‘TV husband’ Mark Foster – see it here!
Mark spoke about his decision on Loose Women
Mark admitted that a recent break-up was one of the reasons why he decided to publicly come out as gay, explaining: "A bit of a difficult year. Dad died in June, there was so many sorts of bits in pieces whereby I never talked about lots of stuff with him. He obviously knew and knew my partners, but there were some things I wished I had asked [for example] when mum and dad split up, what was it like for him? End of last year was quite a difficult time. I split from my partner and had a break. All these things were going on."
