http://www.teamlosangeles.org/images/stories/headline_images/mattmitcham.jpg Matthew Mitcham won the gold medal in men’s platform diving at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, scoring the highest marks ever in platform diving. Matthew Mitcham is 21 years old, resides in Sydney, Australia, and continues competing in diving events while preparing for the 2012 Olympics. Mitcham was one of two “Out” (openly gay) male athletes at the Beijing Olympics.

2008 Summer Olympics

Mitcham at the 2009 Mardi Gras, Sydney

Mitcham represented Australia at the 2008 Summer Olympics in the 10-metre platform and the 3-metre springboard events. He placed 16th on the 3m springboard and did not qualify for the final. He qualified in second position for the semi-final and final of the 10m platform event. After experiencing mixed success in his first five dives in the final, Mitcham entered the final round of dives in second place, 34 points behind Chinese diver Zhou Lüxin.

After Zhou performed his worst dive of the final and scored 74.80, Mitcham still needed to score 107.30, a very high score on the platform, to win the gold. However, his near-perfect final dive drew four perfect 10 scores from judges and achieved a score of 112.10, the highest single-dive score in Olympic history. He finished with an overall score of 537.95 to defeat Zhou, who finished with an overall score of 533.15, to win Australia's second diving medal of the Games.

His win prevented China from claiming a clean-sweep of all diving gold medals at the Olympic Games.He is the first Australian male to win an Olympic gold medal in diving since Dick Eve in 1924.

Mitcham's medal was followed by the Australia Post issuing a 50 cent stamp of him. His stamp was issued on 26 September, one day after his victory.