Olympic Halfpipe Final Will Be Gus Kenworthy’s Last Ever Competition, But His Legacy Goes Far Beyond Skiing

Gus Kenworthy is an American hero.

That’s true even though the freestyle skier will be clad in the colors of Team Great Britain in the men’s ski halfpipe final at the Beijing 2022 Games on Friday.

And it will be true after Kenworthy’s professional skiing career comes to a close following the Games, which he has said will be his last competition.

Because the fact is that even if Kenworthy, who took silver in slopestyle at the 2014 Sochi Games, earns a medal at these Games, his legacy will be about so much more than skiing. It will be about how he used his platform—sometimes at risk to himself—to giving others the strength to be true to themselves.

“I have always known how I want to end my career: I want it to end on a landed run at the Olympics,” Kenworthy told me by phone the week before the Olympics. “I have no desire to hang on to it for four more years, battling with injury, being on the road all the time.”

As the 30-year-old puts it, he’s not old, but he’s old for skiing. Of the 12-skier field in the men’s halfpipe final, only France’s Kevin Rolland and the United States’ David Wise are older. The average age of the rest of the field? 25.

“It’s been a pretty tough last year and a half with injuries and that does come with getting older,” Kenworthy said. When he was young, he was a “rubber band”; now, even a little fall feels like a big fall.

“I feel really grateful I’m in pretty good health heading into the Games. It has not been that way the last two years,” Kenworthy said. “I haven’t gotten to go to the Games for halfpipe and I just want to land a run I’m really proud of.”

It wasn’t a given that Kenworthy would even make it to these Games. In October, training in Switzerland, he suffered a bad concussion—not his first. Then, in November, he tested positive for Covid-19 despite being fully vaccinated. It was not an asymptomatic infection.

When he returned to the States after quarantining for 10 days in Switzerland, he was experiencing residual effects that could have been post-concussion syndrome—disorientation, nausea—but that he attributes to lasting Covid effects.

When he competed in a World Cup event at Copper Mountain on December 8, Kenworthy said he got “lost in the air” during his halfpipe run—“the skiing equivalent to the ‘twisties.’” He withdrew and wouldn’t compete again until X Games Aspen, two weeks before the Games, finishing ninth in the men’s superpipe final.

When Kenworthy drops in on Friday (Saturday morning in China), there will be one major difference between these Games and his previous two appearances at Sochi 2014 and Pyeongchang 2018—and it’s not just that this time around, he’s representing Team GB instead of Team USA.

This will be Kenworthy’s first time competing in halfpipe at the Olympics, and in his mind, his Olympic career has come full-circle.

In 2014, Kenworthy mathematically qualified for both slopestyle and halfpipe ahead of the Sochi Games, but the fourth spot on the halfpipe team was given to a teammate at a coach’s discretion.

“I felt I was very much in the mix at that time and could have gotten on the podium,” Kenworthy said. “I was consistently finishing on or near it.”

There were many factors that went into Kenworthy, who was born in Chelmsford, Essex, to an English mother and American father, deciding to switch his affiliation to Great Britain. He was certainly stung by the U.S. Ski team’s decision not to include him on the halfpipe team in 2014, but that’s not the whole story.

Athletes typically switch affiliations for one of two main reasons—strategy (the other national team is easier to make) or support. The United States is one of the few nations that does not fund Team USA at the government level; instead, the national team is supported by sponsors and individual donations.

In Kenworthy’s case, the financial side of it doesn’t factor in as much. Great Britain is not paying him outright—and, unlike the U.S., which pays athletes a bonus of $37,500 for earning an individual medal, Great Britain does not pay its athletes medal bonuses at all, preferring to invest in them “while they prepare for the Games.”

Kenworthy is receiving similar monetary support from Team GB as he would have from the United States—travel, accommodation at competitions and training camp—but the national team did go above and beyond for him in one major way.

Also present—though sometimes oversold—is the desire to honor a family member. That’s not so for Kenworthy, who genuinely wants to do this as a way to thank his mother, Heather, who the skier says has been his “No. 1 fan.”

“I did think this would be a sweet thing to do for her,” Kenworthy said. “That was icing on the cake.”

As for strategy, Kenworthy, who has a British passport and switched his affiliation to Team Great Britain in December 2019, never worried too much about his ability to make the U.S. Olympic team. However, he didn’t anticipate all the health issues he would face in December and January—the two most important months for qualifying for the U.S. Olympic Ski team.

“In actuality, I probably wouldn’t have made the U.S. team this time around; when I had to perform I wasn’t at my best,” Kenworthy said. “I didn’t come back [from health issues] until mid-January, but obviously I didn’t know that when I switched teams. I just knew doing this other approach would be easier and would give me more time to focus on training and the run and tricks I want to do and the tricks, and not struggling to compete for a spot.”

After his spot on the U.S. halfpipe team was taken away from him in 2014 and he took silver in slopestyle at the 2014 Games, Kenworthy was a bit slow out of the gate in 2015.

Then he came out.

When Kenworthy made the decision to be publicly out—becoming the first action sports athlete to do so—he quickly worked his way back to No. 1 in the world. The decision was freeing—in every way a person can be free. Mentally, he was in the best place of his career.

“All competition is about your headspace and being in the right place mentally and being able to tune out the other factors,” Kenworthy said. “Knowing I was gonna come out freed me to feel relief and I skied better because of it and I finished that season really strong. The next season after I was out, I was coming off injury and I still had the best season I’ve ever had. Nothing had changed; I wasn’t doing anything different with my approach. It just felt better and I skied better. I felt free.”

Over the course of his Olympic career, Kenworthy has watched the world progress—and, in many ways, has caused it to.

In Sochi in 2014, he was in the closet in a nation that actively had anti-LGBTQ legislature in place. In the 2018 Games, he was out and proud, walking into the opening ceremony alongside Adam Rippon feeling loved and supported. The Tokyo 2020 Games had even more representation; there were at least 186 publicly out athletes competing at the Summer Games—more out athletes than at all the previous Games combined.

Now, at the 2022 Beijing Games, U.S. skater Timothy LeDuc became the first non-binary athlete to participate in a Winter Olympics.

“What’s really amazing about the LBGTQ community is that just one person being out affects and helps someone else,” Kenworthy said. “Someone who’s like you or speaking their truth and letting the world see them for who they are is a brave thing to do, and it helps other people even when you don’t know it. For me, doing that in a big way on the world stage and at the Olympics, I’m excited for that and grateful for that.”

Kenworthy has been vocal about China’s social and human rights violations, even knowing that speaking out could have consequences. “I’m cursed in that I oftentimes don’t know when to shut up,” Kenworthy said with a chuckle.

Still, he understands that using his voice will be his lasting legacy—even more so than if he were to win a medal in halfpipe at these Games.

“China’s not very progressive and is not open to the LGBTQ community, but the Olympics are being watched from all over the world and I have the opportunity to be a beacon of hope for a lot of youth watching and lot of people who are struggling with their own identity,” Kenworthy said.

Kenworthy will compete in the final competition of his career—and his first-ever Olympic halfpipe final—Friday night. As for what comes next, he’d like to keep acting—he famously appeared on season 9 of American Horror Story and also had a small role on the Will & Grace revival. He also loves writing and would like to put out a “collection of essays a la David Sedaris.”

More immediately, Kenworthy is looking forward to relaxing and decompressing with his loved ones and his dogs.

Most people know about Birdie, the Jindo/Lab mix he adopted in 2018 from South Korea. His boyfriend, Matt, also has a scruffy white terrier mix he adopted from a shelter in L.A. prior to their relationship. On a walk one day, Kenworthy says, a woman walking down the street pointed at him and said, “I like him; he looks like an unmade bed.”

“I really cherish being home,” Kenworthy said. “I love being with my dogs and my boyfriend and getting coffee and going to the gym and having a normal routine, seeing my family more. I’m excited for those things.”

Not having a totally clear sense of what’s next is “scary, in a way,” Kenworthy said.

“I’ve been on both sides of the emotion. I’ve spiraled; how will I do with no structure, how do I introduce myself? I feel fear and excited that I don’t really know what’s next. It’s an adventure; I’m at the beginning of something. I’m sure it will be fun, whatever it is.”