U.S. track star Trey Cunningham comes out as gay

American track star Trey Cunningham, who competed in last month’s U.S.

American track star Trey Cunningham, who competed in last month’s U.S. Olympic Trials, has come out publicly as gay.

In an interview with The New York Times, Cunningham said that coming out to his family in private five years ago was the “scariest thing I’ve ever done.”

Now, he is coming out to the rest of the world. His reason for coming out publicly, he told the Times, came from a track training technique he uses. 

“We say our goals out loud,” he said. “If there’s something we want to achieve, we say it. Putting something in words makes it real.”

Cunningham, 25, who ran for Florida State University, said he didn’t “explore the idea” of being gay until college, attributing the slow exploration of his sexuality to having grown up in a conservative and rural part of Alabama. The hurdler called his hometown of Winfield “the sort of place where you did not want to be the gay kid at school.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/nbc-out-proud/us-track-star-trey-cunningham-comes-gay-rcna160844

---