Amini Fonua

Amini Tuitavake Fonua (born 14 December 1989) is a Tongan swimmer.

Fonua was born and raised in Ponsonby, Auckland, New Zealand to Tongan lawyer Sione Fonua and British-born mother Julie. He holds dual Tongan and New Zealand citizenship. His family includes two other sisters.

Fonua's swimming career began at the Roskill Swimming Club based at Cameron Pool in Auckland, coached by Sandra Burrow from 1999-2007. He broke numerous Auckland and New Zealand Age Group Records under Burrow's tenure. He then moved to West Auckland Aquatics in 2007, and was coached by Donna Bouzaid. In the Fall of 2008, Fonua enrolled at Texas A&M on a swimming scholarship. While at Texas A&M he was a peer voted Team Captain, Big XII Conference Champion, and NCAA All-American. He graduated with a Telecommunication and Multi-Media degree, with a Minor in Creative Writing in May 2013.

He was "the first Tongan swimmer to win a gold medal in international competition", when he took gold in the 50 metre breaststroke at the 2010 Oceania Swimming Championships.

In preparation for the 2012 London Olympics Amini was trained by New Zealander and designated head coach for Tonga, Jon Winter. He served as his nation's flag-bearer in the 2012 Summer Olympics Parade of Nations. As a swimmer at the 2012 Summer Olympics, he competed in the Men's 100 metre breaststroke, failing to reach the semifinals.

Fonua makes the journey to Tonga at least once a year to support Tonga's learn-to-swim programme.

Fonua is openly gay. He came out on campus during his freshman year and publicly came out in 2013 in part to defend his school from the perception that it is a hostile environment for LGBT students. The Texas A&M graduate made his announcement in his campus newspaper, The Battalion, where he also defended the school against accusations of homophobia. Fonua says the announcement barely rated a mention on campus and admits he never expected such a big big response.

"The article itself was a favour to a friend in my creative writing class and it turned out to be a cover story.... I had no intentions of it getting as big as it was and didn’t see it as a coming out story because I’ve been out to my closest friends and family for five years now." In January 2014 he was named in Out Magazine's fourth annual "100 Most Eligible Bachelors" list.

The section "Biography" of this page contains content from the copyrighted Wikipedia article "Amini Fonua"; that content is used under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.