British Olympic silver medallist Colin Jackson has opened up about his sexuality in a new Swedish documentary for SVT called Rainbow Heroes.
The former athlete and BBC sports commentator described how his parents reacted when his former partner outed him in a story he sold to a tabloid newspaper.
“I was waiting for them in the kitchen,” Jackson tells host Anna Blomqvist.
“They walked in and they sat down. My mother could see my face and I was quite distraught. It didn’t faze them at all.
“My mum went: ‘First of all, is the story true?’
“And I said it’s true, so it’s not like I can deny it. And then she went: ‘Well, why are people so disgraceful?’
“I just realised, I’ve got the best parents.”
The 50-year-old said he kept his sexuality private because he didn’t want his story to be sensationalised but that Rainbow Heroes approached him in a conscientious way.
"The way you asked me, it was a whole storytelling kind of thing and you were just interested in the way it affected me sports-wise, emotionally-wise and my preparation,” he says to Blomqvist.
