In an unexpected piece of fantastic news, the golden boy of diving, Greg Louganis, is finally going to appear on the front of a Wheaties box as part of General Mills’ “Legends” series.
NPR also reports that hurdler Edwin Moses, who won two gold medals and set a world record for the 400m hurdles in 1976, along with swimmer Janet Evans—a four-time gold medal winner who broke seven world records—will be joining Louganis, a four-time Olympic diving gold medalist and five-time world champion who also became the first man to reach 700m in platform diving. You got all that? It's quite the confab of gold medal and record-breaking winners.
Louganis, who came out as gay and publicly revealed he was HIV-positive in 1995, was recently the subject of a Change.org petition to have his image put on the Wheaties box. The author of the petition, Julie Sondgerath, was inspired after watching HBO’s 2005 documentary Back on Board: Greg Louganis. She says in a post on Change.org: “A scene in the documentary stuck with me. At the Swimming Hall of Fame, Greg passes by a series of Wheaties boxes with various Olympic athletes from the swimming and diving world and softly mentions, 'Never got a Wheaties box.' In that moment, I was inspired to start a campaign asking General Mills to ‘Put Greg Louganis on the Wheaties Box.’”
Sondgerath's petition garnered just shy of 44,000 signatures, and she even met with General Mills executives and delivered the signatures! Someone give that lady a medal. Although the NPR piece says, “Wheaties told NPR that the petition did not factor into the decision to put Louganis on a Wheaties box.”
Okay. Be that as it may, Louganis is “humbled” by the upcoming placement:
You can listen to each of the athletes’ comments about being on the Wheaties box and more on the Taste of General Mills blog. The Wheaties Legends boxes for Louganis, Evans and Moses will start appearing in U.S. stores in May.
America, your breakfast tables will be getting quite the upgrade—progress looks great on you.