Trey Cunningham found those first few phone calls excruciating. He has spent his life learning to keep his cool while out on the track, under intense pressure, in the glare of the crowd.
But as he waited in the quiet for his family and his friends to pick up, waited to tell them he is gay, he found himself dripping with sweat.
It was, he said, the “scariest thing I’ve ever done.” He went through with it, at age 20, for much the same reason he is discussing it publicly now, five years later.
There is a technique that Cunningham has long used in his training. “We say our goals out loud,” he said. “If there’s something we want to achieve, we say it.