Nigel Owens heartbreakingly reveals how far he tried to go to suppress his homosexuality

Nigel Owens "didn't want to be gay."

The Welsh referee, widely regarded as one of the best in the business, came out of the closet in 2007 but has famously struggled to come to terms with his homosexuality and attempted suicide when he was younger. And, in an interview with CNN, Owens has revealed the drastic measures he attempted to make to suppress his sexual orientation.

"I actually went to the doctor at one stage to see if I could be chemically castrated in any way, if it would get rid of me being gay. "Looking back at that it was a horrific thing that one would have to do but that's what I was going through at the time. "It was only when my Mum came to see me in hospital when I tried to take my own life and she told me: 'If you try to do anything like this again then you take me and Dad with you because we don't want to live our lives without you'. "I was an only child. I sat up in bed that night and I cried. I thought to myself that I need to grow up here. That's when I accepted who I was and that was the biggest challenge of my life over with."