Davis ‘feels free’ after coming out to team
Former Bath Rugby winger Levi Davis has opened up about his experience of coming out to his teammates as bisexual earlier this year.
In the modern world it shouldn’t be a significant story, but because so few other rugby players have come out as anything other than heterosexual it is.
In 2009 former Wales and British and Irish Lions captain Gareth Thomas famously came out as gay but he was at the end of his career, 35 at the time, and in the decade since, very few others have followed in his footsteps.
But exciting young winger Davis, who is still just 22, has become the first professional rugby player to reveal he is bisexual.
In April, in the midst of lockdown, every Bath Rugby player received a Whatsapp message they weren’t expecting.
Speaking to the Mail on Sunday, Davis explains: “I had hidden it well but I couldn’t keep it secret any longer. I had to tell them, all of them, not just a few.”
The “spur-of-the-moment” message from the talented musician, who appeared on Celebrity X-factor last year as part of rugby boy band Try Star with Thom Evans and Ben Foden, read: “Hi guys. I just want to tell you something that’s been eating away at me for four years now. I want to be open and honest with you boys, as friends and teammates. I’m bisexual. It’s something I have known since I was 18.”
Jokingly he signed off: “None of you lot are on my radar... so it’s OK.”
What happened next brought an overwhelming rush of relief to the former England U18s and U19s player as the supportive messages from his teammates quickly buzzed into his inbox. Then the banter began and he knew his news had truly been accepted. Davis, who joined Championship side Ealing Trailfinders over the summer, has praised his former Gallagher Premiership club Bath for supporting him over the last year as his mental health suffered and he turned to heavy drinking as he wrestled with his secret.
He said: “Thankfully we can now discuss mental health more openly. And in the same way, I want people to feel that they can be who they are and that it is OK to be who they are.
“Hiding who you are can kill you – and has killed people.
“I don’t know yet where I am going, but by talking today I can walk hand-in-hand with whoever I want and it won’t matter any more because it’s out there.”
There are staggeringly few who are anything other than openly straight in mainstream professional sport. Former Premier League footballer Thomas Hitzlsperger came out in 2014 after he had retired but there are no openly gay footballers currently in the league.
Davis said: “There are definitely others out there in rugby. At this moment in time, I feel so free. I am really, really happy that this is coming out and I can be myself.”