Ari-Pekka Liukkonen (born 9 February 1989) is a Finnish swimmer and European champion. He competed in the 50 m freestyle event at the 2012 Summer Olympics. He is the Finnish record holder over that distance with a time of 21.58 sec, as well as the short course record in the 50 m. He also holds the 100 m freestyle record, at 49.44 seconds. At the

2016 Olympics ) , nations = 207 (including IOA and EOR teams) , athletes = 11,238 , events = 306 in 28 sports (41 disciplines) , opening = 5 August 2016 , closing = 21 August 2016 , opened_by = Vice President Michel Temer , cauldron = Vanderlei Cordeiro ...

he swam in the 50 and 100 m freestyle events.

Personal life

On 2 February 2014 Liukkonen

came out Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBT people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity. Framed and debated as a privacy issue, coming out of ...

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...

in an

Yle Yleisradio Oy ( Finnish, literally "General Radio Ltd." or "General Broadcast Ltd."; abbr. Yle ; sv, Rundradion Ab, italics=no), translated to English as the Finnish Broadcasting Company, is Finland's national public broadcasting company, found ...

interview, thus becoming one of the first openly gay top-level athletes in Finland.

References

External links

* * 1989 births Living people Finnish male freestyle swimmers Olympic swimmers of Finland Swimmers at the 2012 Summer Olympics Swimmers at the 2016 Summer Olympics Swimmers at the 2020 Summer Olympics Universiade medalists in swimming Universiade gold medalists for Finland Medalists at the 2017 Summer Universiade European Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming Finnish LGBT sportspeople LGBT swimmers Gay sportsmen People from Pieksämäki 21st-century LGBT people Sportspeople from South Savo {{Finland-swimming-bio-stub