Dame Kelly Holmes has said that she "feels happy for the first time" after keeping her sexuality a secret for over 30 years.
The Olympic gold medallist, 52, came out as gay earlier this year as she revealed her fears of persecution when she served in the Royal Army Corps.
Appearing on Loose Women today, she reflected on how her life had changed since she decided to speak about her sexuality for the first time.
She told her fellow panellists: "Since doing my documentary, called Being Me, and announcing publicly that I was a gay woman, a few months ago, it's changed everything about me
"I feel free, I'm happy for the first time in my life. I've met so many people too.
"Some people still don't know, but fear is a debilitating factor of life.
"A lot of fear is irrational, but a lot of people have fear in their life and mine was worrying that I'd still be in trouble from the military because it was against the law to be be gay while I was serving in the military."
Speaking about how she had spent 30 years hiding her secret, she said she had tried to "change the narrative in [her] head".
"It's ok to have the conversations we have and to just talk normally," she said.
"When you're having to constantly check yourself, everything that you say and do on a day-to-day basis, because you can't talk about a partner, you can't talk about where you went on holiday…"
Interjecting, Kaye Adams said: "You probably wouldn't have come on this show."
"I don't think I would've even been asked, to be honest. I've become more free," she said.
In June this year, Kelly bravely came out as gay in a powerful interview with the Mirror.
She explained that her scary brush with Covid made her realise that she needed to show the world her "real self" and that bottling things up triggered breakdowns and left her suicidal.
Kelly admitted: “There have been lots of dark times where I wished I could scream that I am gay – but I couldn’t.”
