Team GB’s first openly gay athlete, Tom Bosworth, talks about why he chose race walking, being an out gay sportsman and his hopes for the Paris Olympics in 2024

Words Alastair James

Photography Markus Bidaux

They say you shouldn’t judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. The same can probably be said of race walking, and it’s a statement Team GB’s Tom Bosworth seems to agree with. The race walker, who was the first Team GB member to come out as gay in 2015, has set some incredible milestones and broken many a record in a sport that’s often derided for being “too easy”. Here, Bosworth tells Attitude how difficult race walking actually is, and reveals how he gets through the bad days.

What got you into race walking?

It was more what athletics as a whole offered. I think I would have loved school sports if it was a more welcoming place —I hated it! Team sports were never going to be my thing, whereas athletics is such an individual sport and it’s just me; you can be as fast or slow as you want. That is what attracted me to it. I’ve always been built to be an endurance athlete, that’s for sure. So, I was an easy target for bullies and deemed very weak and all sorts. Athletics involves different kinds of strengths, which played right into my hand.

It strikes me as a sport that a lot of people misunderstand. Would you agree?

A lot of people think it’s quite easy and when they realise the intensity of the training, the mileage we do, and actually that we can walk faster than some people can run, people turn around and go, “Wow! This is actually incredibly hard!” I think people don’t see it as not a sport, but it’s like saying, “Why doesn’t everybody just do the fastest swimming stroke?” There are different strokes that aren’t as efficient, are more taxing, more technical, and that pretty much hits the nail on the head with race walking — it’s really technical and very difficult.