Movement Builds to Honor Greg Louganis on a Wheaties Box

From: The New York Times

When Julie Sondgerath learned from the premiere of the HBO documentary “Greg Louganis: Back on Board” this month that Louganis, the transcendent Olympic diver, had never been on the cover of a Wheaties cereal box, she started a petition drive on Change.org to demand that General Mills correct an omission that has lasted more than 30 years.

She had watched a scene almost midway through the film in which Louganis is looking at a display of Wheaties boxes with Olympic athletes on them: Amy Van Dyken, Laura Wilkinson and Brooke Bennett. All deserving. But where was Louganis?

“Never got a Wheaties box,” Louganis, with a shrug and a reluctant smile, says in the documentary.

“It kind of broke my heart,” Sondgerath said by telephone from Chicago. “This is a guy who did everything right. He trained from his teens. He went to the Olympics. He won silver in 1976. He won gold in 1984 and again in ’88. He did everything right.”

Casual sports and Olympic fans might not be able to name another diver — a reflection of his superiority and the sport’s relatively modest profile. Still, Louganis is quite possibly the greatest ever at his sport. He won gold medals on the three-meter springboard and the 10-meter platform in each of those Summer Games.

But Wheaties’s recognition escaped him in 1984, though not Mary Lou Retton and Carl Lewis. Four years later, he won the same events but was again ignored by Wheaties.

Homophobia would seem to be the only reason that Louganis was denied the simple cereal-box accolade. He says so in the documentary, even if the filmmakers could not present anyone from General Mills who would agree. A spokesman for the cereal-maker said that nobody from that period was left to discuss the decision-making.

There were rumors that Louganis was gay in the 1980s, when only his friends, family and the swimming community knew. He came out publicly at the Gay Games in 1994 but did not acknowledge until the release of his autobiography the next year that he had tested HIV-positive before the 1988 Olympics.

Out of fear, Louganis did not inform the doctor of his condition when he treated the bloody wound caused when Louganis hit his head on the springboard during a preliminary dive.

Louganis’s on-camera shrug suggests an acknowledgment that being ignored by Wheaties should be placed in a 1980s context — during the early years of the AIDS epidemic and decades before court rulings led to same-sex marriages like his own.

Mary Lou Retton was honored after the 1984 Olympics.

 It was such a different time,” he said by telephone last week. “There was a mentality of fear.”

Will Sweeney, the producer of “Back on Board,” said: “Greg is always very careful and willing to consider alternate explanations. But rationally, I can’t come up with any other one. Here was a guy who by any metric or evaluation was the dominant figure in his sport. And here he was standing against a wall of Wheaties boxes of people who people don’t know. How was it possible he never had a Wheaties box?”

And how is it possible that Wheaties has still not found the time to do the right thing? There is no statute of limitations, so why, 27 years since Louganis’s final Olympic dive, has Wheaties forgotten him? General Mills has come around to finally honoring certain athletes well after their retirement or, in the case of Jim Thorpe, after his death.

Michael Phelps was honored after his Olympic success in Athens.

Thorpe’s Wheaties box-worthy achievements occurred decades before the front of Wheaties boxes featured athletes. He won gold medals in the pentathlon and the decathlon at the 1912 Summer Games in Stockholm. He died in 1953, long before the medals that were revoked for his being a professional were reinstated in 1983. Finally, in 2001, Wheaties put his likeness on its boxes. What took them so long?

Perhaps the Change.org petition will change minds at General Mills about Louganis. Or maybe the documentary will persuade Wheaties marketers of his diving achievements and struggles as a gay man.

“The thing people react to in the film,” said Cheryl Furjanic, its director, “is they see what an incredible athlete and human he is and they say, ‘If all these other people were on the Wheaties box, why wasn’t he?’ ”

Louganis is not actively campaigning on behalf of the petition (which has more than 5,000 signatures so far), but he said, “I know that it’s done out of love and compassion.”

He added, “It comes from such a loving place that I’m just grateful to have that kind of support.”

Wheaties is aware of the petition — all it has to do is act on it. In a statement, the company seemed part of the way to doing so.

“Greg Louganis was certainly a world-class diver and truly embodied the championship mentality of a Wheaties athlete,” it said. “While we do not discuss future marketing decisions, we will look into how we celebrate his accomplishments.”