Interview with Kelly explaining why she had to keep this quiet attached below.
People having a go at her on this thread for coming out should be fucking ashamed of themselves.
It was illegal in the Army to be gay until 2000 (context: that was the year Kelly won her first Olympic medal in Sydney). She was subject to barracks raids by her superiors, where they would try to find evidence amongst personal belongings that soldiers were gay. Army medals were taken away from soldiers discovered to be gay. Kelly had an MBE for services to the Army long before she was recognised by the wider public for her athletic achievements. Would you risk the public humiliation of having that taken away from you?
She had a tough childhood (spent time in care, a mixed race child with absent father in a very white town), and a documented history of self harm during all her injuries whilst trying to compete. I've followed her since she first emerged as a top flight athlete in the early 1990s. She was being constantly criticised for not being quite as good as she potentially could be. Athletes didn't have the lottery funding or mental and physical health support they have now. She was combining competing with a full on army career. She endured rumours about her and her training partner, Maria Mutola, which put immense pressure on that relationship and with their mutual coach, eventually leading them to break that working relationship when Kelly was coming back to form pre Athens 2004.
When she did finally reach top success in Athens (pretty much unaided by any formal coaching at that stage), there were many people who accused her of being a drugs cheat. She went overnight from fairly obscure runner, who once had potential but never quite made it, to the woman that saved the Athens Olympic from being a disaster for Team GB (it was supposed to have been Paula Radcliffe's golden moment that year). She was catapulted into the limelight. She retired pretty soon afterwards and then had to carve out a new life for herself.
She used her post Athens fame to start an academy for emerging teen girl athletes. I'm sure there would have been lots of scurrilous rumours about her doing this whilst openly lesbian.
Add to all that pressure over all the phases of her life being an open lesbian. Don't forget, her awareness of her sexuality spanned the 1980s and 1990s, when being openly gay was downright dangerous, and certainly not as easy as it is now. Adding another layer of "difference" to her already difficult childhood, her struggles with self harm and later public image? She would have been torn to shreds. Just the fear of it would have been enough. Her mum died and she had a breakdown and she is now out at the age of 52. Just think of all the personal happiness she has had to pass up out of fear of being out or outed.
And all the while, she's had the bravery to speak up against drugs cheats in sport (got criticised for that too) and against the current attacks on female sport.
So the detractors on this thread and the TRAs can really go to hell. If they had an ounce of this amazing woman's strength, resilience, spirit or integrity, they would be lucky indeed. I doubt that they do.