Dame Kelly Holmes hopes being open about her sexuality will bring contentment to her life as she admitted: “I don’t feel I have ever been happy.”
Holmes, 52, who won Olympic gold in the women’s 800 and 1500 metres at the 2004 Games in Athens, says she feels as though she is finally “releasing herself” after coming out as gay over the weekend.
In an interview with ITV’s This Morning programme, Holmes said: “I became a self harmer, I didn’t want to be here frankly at some points in my life.
Kelly Holmes shows off her Olympic gold medals from Athens (Rebecca Naden/PA)
“I’ve been in a bad way a lot and in 2020 I had a really bad breakdown. I knew if I couldn’t release it, then I didn’t know what I was going to do, so I had to (come out).
“I am relieved to finally do it, but it’s hard to unravel everything, so I know the relief will come gradually.
“The responses are really helping me, but it’s that relief and that final thing of releasing myself to have my life. I can honestly say I don’t feel I have ever been happy.”
This Morning presenter Phillip Schofield asked Holmes if she thought she could be happy now, and she replied: “Yes.”
Holmes’ story is told in an ITV documentary, ‘Kelly Holmes: Being Me’, which airs on Sunday.
She told This Morning that being in the military, where homosexuality was banned until 2000, made coming out even more difficult.
“You can’t change who you are,” she said.
“So I grew up with that fear in the head because I absolutely loved being a soldier in the army. It was something that I really wanted to do.
Dame Kelly Holmes spent nearly a decade serving in the military (Andrew Matthews/PA)
“I was in there for nearly 10 years and yet I couldn’t express that. It was really difficult, because there was interrogation that happened.
“In the documentary, I explain it a lot and I speak to people that dealt with some shocking things, but for me personally, having raids, it was scary, humiliating, embarrassing.
“People were tipped off, the Royal Military Police would come into your barracks and literally turn everything upside down, take everything out, you’d be left with your belongings laying around. They were trying to find any evidence you might be (gay).
“If you got tipped off… you’d put everything into a box that was anything to do with your sexuality, and hide it in the boot of a car because you don’t want to risk being court marshalled.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here