Patrick Finley: Louganis dives in to assist youths, 22 years after his 'death sentence'

What do we have to do, they asked, to get you back around the sport for the first time since 1988?

"Invite me," he said.

And so they did, smoothing over rankled wrinkles from the previous administrations. And Louganis accepted, arriving this week at the Age Group and Junior National Diving Championships at Hillenbrand Aquatic Center.

He signed autographs over the weekend and appeared at Monday night's opening ceremony.

Thursday morning, with his partner and four dogs, Louganis will bound back across the desert in his 40-foot RV toward his home in Malibu, Calif.

Twenty-two years ago, such things seemed impossible.

Six months before the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, Louganis was diagnosed with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

It was a "death sentence," he said Monday night.

Louganis, now 50, was training in Florida at the time.

"I was going to do the honorable thing," he said. "And fly back to California, lock myself in my house and wait to die."

That was the mentality then, he said.

Louganis was talked into remaining in Florida, but he still feared a certain early death.

He wanted to take friend Ryan White, a teenager diagnosed with HIV, with him to the 1988 Olympic Games. White was denied a visa to Seoul because he had the disease.

Louganis, who did not disclose his disease publicly until years after the games, had someone else bring his medication into Seoul, fearing he would be sent home. "I couldn't have gone," he said.

I was 11 when Magic Johnson announced he had HIV. I remember where I was (on the blacktop during lunch at school), who told me (David Oliver) and what I felt (that one of my favorite athletes was going to die.)

Do you realize how long ago that seems, culturally?

"People don't remember," Louganis said. "We forget where we came from."

Louganis infamously bashed his head while diving in the preliminary rounds in Seoul, leaving a doctor to stitch him up and a staff to clean up the pool area. None outside Louganis and a few close friends knew of his disease.

He is probably the greatest diver ever. At 16, in 1976, he won a silver medal. He won double gold medals in 1984 and 1988.

In 1994, he announced publicly he was gay.

The next year, he announced that he had been diagnosed with HIV in 1988; he told Barbara Walters in 1995 that, by the Center for Disease Control's definition, it had developed into AIDS.

Louganis takes a handful of pills twice a day - once in the morning and once at night. He participates in acupuncture and has a Chinese herbalist, whom he credits with helping offset the rigors of Western medicine.

He sees a Western doctor only once every four months.

He's lived in Malibu for 25 years and has been seeing his current partner for three years. Louganis, who has dealt with depression and dyslexia during his life, now gives motivational speeches.

"I could understand when I was a kid," he said, "that someone could die of sadness."

He speaks about diversity and living with HIV and AIDS.

In his free time, Louganis trains his four dogs that actively compete in agility competitions.

"I don't view myself so much as a competitor as much as a performer," he said. "When I'm out with my dogs and we do compete, I want them to perform well."

Since his return to USA Diving, Louganis has served as a de facto mentor for junior athletes.

He wants to get rid of club competition in America, unite divers from across the country to unite against the rest of the world, and share resources and information and motivation.

He wants to consult with coaches, too.

"Some of these coaches are coaching dives they've never done in their lives," he said.

Louganis has done them, to say the least. He and a few contemporaries pushed diving toward where it is now.

"We were kind of trailblazers," he said.