British-born John Amaechi, a professional American basketball player, is set to come out of the closet.
A Stockport native of English and Nigerian backgrounds, Amaechi, 36, will announce that he is gay on popular sports channel ESPN early next week, according to Outsports.
Promoting his new book Man in the Middle, Amaechi chronicles life as a closeted basketball player in the NBA (National Basketball Association), the US premier men's professional basketball league.
He formerly played for US state Florida teams Orlando Jazz and Orlando Magic. He retired playing professionally in 2003.
His sexuality has been a topic of speculation for years, even so far as sparking a tasteless comment on Amaechi’s “atypical” fondness of gardens, opera, and poetry.
"Could be that the Nigerian-Brit just operates on a different planet?" Sports writer Randy Boyd once asked in his ever-insightful column. "But then again, that explanation for his atypical behaviour wouldn’t be any fun now would it?"
When nominated among those in the NBA most likely to be gay (ranked in 16th place), Ameachi reportedly asked "Why wasn't I higher than 16th?"
Next week’s public confession is said to kick off Amaechi’s book-promoting campaign in New York.
His publicist Howard Bragman has described Amaechi as “ an activist for a lot of different causes, and [he] thought it was silly that he wasn't an activist for the LGBT community, so he decided there was no reason for him to stay in the closet."
Bratman further described the athlete as “discreet but not deeply closeted”.
“For people who know him or have covered him it's probably not a shocking revelation."
In his book, Amaechi described his sexuality as “an open secret” amid the American sports media.
"By the end of my second season, I was practically daring reporters to take the bait and out me," he wrote. "But it never happened. My sexuality, I felt, had become an open secret, which was fine by me. I'd left enough open to interpretation that suspicions were gaining momentum."
In a 2002, Amaechi spoke to the Scotsman, explained why gays weren’t visible in the NBA.
"If you look at our league, minorities aren't very well represented. There's hardly any Hispanic players, no Asian-Americans, so that there's no openly gay players is no real surprise. It would be like an alien dropping down from space. There'd be fear, then panic: they just wouldn't know how to handle it."
Amaechi, listed on the website 100 Great Black Britons, was raised in the UK where he currently works as philanthropist of the ABC Foundation, which works to construct sports centres and create mentors and athletic programmes for children in England.
The foundation's first sports centre was built in Manchester.
Amaechi also represented England last year during the Commonwealth Games, which won him a bronze medal.
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