GUS KENWORTHY
Out, proud, gay and world number-one… and he rescues puppies! What’s not to love about US Slopestyle Skier, Gus Kenworthy?
What’s not to love?
Augustus Richard “Gus” Kenworthy was born in Chelmsford, England in 1991 and was brought to the United States at a young age by his mother, Pip, who settled the family in the ski town of Telluride, Colorado.
In the 1990s, Telluride was one of the premier winter sports destinations in the United States so, like many local kids, Gus began to ski not long after he began to walk, beginning a life-long passion for the snow.
Gus has said he became aware of his attraction to other males from a very young age, telling an interviewer in 2015, “I figured out I was gay at about the age of five. If I was watching a movie, I was always fixating on the male lead… [by the time I] was in high school I realised, ‘Oh, I’m actually really into guys and want to hook up with them,’ but that was not an option at all. I’d just turned pro in skiing, and I was travelling, so there were girls at events, and they’d get pushed on you, and it was hard to circumnavigate that.”
He was also unsure how his religious family would take it.
Gus graduated from Telluride High School in June of 2010 after deferring his graduation for a year to concentrate on building his profile as a competitive freestyle skier. Still aged 18, he began his first serious, if closeted, relationship with another man, Robin Macdonald, a filmmaker and photographer who was also involved in the winter sports world.
Slopestyle skiing is Gus’ speciality. It’s a form of competitive skiing influenced by skateboarding and other action sports where points are awarded by judges for pulling off tricks as skiers negotiate a downhill course with obstacles like rails and jumps.
In 2011 Gus won his first gold medals in an international competition in the Slopestyle and Halfpipe categories at the New Zealand Winter Games. Two years later he was invited to compete in the Winter X Games Europe in Tignes, France where he took home bronze.
But it was the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia that seriously propelled him to fame as a celebrated athlete after Team USA took out all the medals in the Men’s Slopestyle competition.
By now, Gus was out to close friends and family and, when he came out as gay to his somewhat religious mother, she said she’d already guessed. He and Robin may have slept in separate beds when they stayed with her, but the chemistry between them had been hard to ignore.
While still on the down low, Robin and Gus travelled together as a couple to the Sochi Games despite the looming spectre of Russia’s Gay Propaganda Law that had been passed by the Duma just months earlier. When Gus wasn’t training or competing, the couple spent their time documenting the plight of Sochi’s abandoned street dogs, who they had come to love and which officials were seeking to cull off during the Games.
Gus remained in Russia after the Games to help organise bringing a group of the dogs back to the United States for adoption by American families, keeping his favourite of the puppies for himself.
When Gus returned to the US with gold- and bronze-winning skiers Josh Christensen and Nick Goepper, the trio became instant media darlings, appearing on The Late Show, The Today Show
and even on a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes celebrating their win. They had become only the third trio of American athletes in history to take out all of the medals in a single Winter Olympics event.
When Gus returned to his hometown in Colorado, they threw a parade in his honour, the town’s Mayor proclaimed a stretch of Telluride’s San Juan Avenue as “Gus’ Way”. “This is incredibly overwhelming,” Gus said in response. “This whole crowd here is my family.”
But on the inside, Gus wasn’t so sure. Despite his town’s adulation, he later told ESPN that he feared fans and sponsors would reject him if they knew he was gay. “I never got to be proud of what I did in Sochi because I felt so horrible about what I didn’t do,” Gus said in that interview. “I didn’t want to come out [as gay] as the silver-medallist from Sochi. I wanted to come out as the best freeskier in the world.”
Less than a year after Sochi, Gus’ world started to come apart. The favourite for all his events at the X Games in Aspen, he failed to win a single medal. A few months earlier, his relationship with Robin had ended and he’d left with their dogs.
After his failure at the X Games he told his family and agent that he was going to quit professional sport. They talked him around and it’s a good thing they did. Ten days after Aspen he took third in the halfpipe competition at the Mammoth Mountain Grand Prix. Two weeks after that he won a big air skiing event at Los Angeles’ Rose Bowl stadium.
Then, in February of 2015, at the US Freeskiing Grand Prix in Park City, Utah, he spectacularly won the event when he became the first skier in history to pull off four double corkscrews in a half pipe run.
On the back of that win, Gus finished his ski season ranked number one by the Association of Freeskiing Professionals, confirming his position as the best freeskier in the world.
He took the summer off to recuperate from injuries. Then he came out publicly, becoming the world’s first action-sports star to come out as gay while still competing professionally. “I want to be the guy who comes out, wins shit and is like, ‘I’m taking names!’” Gus told ESPN.
And rather than being shunned by the public, he was rewarded with new fans and sponsors as a result. By the time his coming-out interview was published in ESPN he had also embarked on a new relationship with stage and screen actor, Matthew Wilkas.
Flash forward to the end of 2016 and Gus, a vocal Hillary Clinton supporter, was floored when America elected Donald Trump its next president. “WTF America? You really want an openly racist, sexual assaulting orange monster that doesn’t believe in climate change to be our president?” Gus tweeted in dismay on election night.
The day after Trump’s inauguration, Gus took part in one of the many Women’s March protests held across America, marching in Denver, Colorado. In his hometown of Telluride, half the town turned out.
In the meantime, Gus continued to be rewarded for his candour in coming out. In June of 2017, American LGBT rights group the Human Rights Campaign honoured him with a Visibility Award. A month later, he turned heads again when he returned to ESPN for the magazine’s Body Issue, posing naked wearing only his skis in the snow.
At the start of 2018, Gus was in South Korea preparing for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics when he broke his thumb during practice. The silver lining, he joked, was that it would prevent him from having to shake hands with Vice President Mike Pence, who Trump has sent in his place, along with his daughter Ivanka.
When the Slopestyle competition began, and even with a broken thumb, Gus came seventh in the qualification round, beating 23 other skiers. However, in the medal round he came last in a field of 12. Nick Goepper, who he had shared that cereal box cover with, took the silver.
But still Gus managed to make Olympic history – after finishing his run, he kissed his boyfriend Matthew on the lips. It became the first same-sex kiss broadcast around the world as part of NBC’s live coverage of the Games. The couple were unaware they were even on camera. “This was actually the Olympic experience I was hoping for,” Gus later told CNN’s Will Ripley. “I’m leaving here more fulfilled without a medal than I did at the last games with one. [Because] this Olympics I’m out, I’m me. I’m out the closet, I get to experience this as myself.”
In South Korea, Gus again used his profile to bring awareness to the plight of dogs, this time touring a dog meat farm that the Humane Society was in the process of shutting down. The Society took 90 dogs back to Canada and the US to be adopted and, once again, Gus chose his pick of the litter to adopt himself.
So, what’s next for Gus Kenworthy? He’s unsure whether he’ll compete in the 2022 Winter Olympics but expect more from him as he concentrates on preparing for the next Winter X Games and the US Freeskiing Grand Prix.
In the meantime, while he’s proud to be a role model for LGBTIQ youth, he’s not afraid of indulging the playful side of his public persona. After Ricky Martin announced that he wanted to normalise open relationships, Kenworthy and boyfriend Matt briefly met the singer and his husband Jwan Yosef at an Oscars after-party hosted by Vanity Fair.
After the party, Gus dedicated an Instagram post to the singer in the style of a Craigslist “missed connections” listing, writing: “Living La Vida Lonely,” referencing Martin’s 1999 hit. “We were wearing black Ralph Lauren tuxedos, mine had little cowboys on it… You were also both wearing tuxedos because… well, because it was the Oscars and everybody does. You and your husband stood out though. Partly because you’re both gorgeous but also because you’re literally Ricky Martin and Jwan Yosef! The four of us chatted and laughed but then, sadly, got separated in the chaos of the Oscars. My bf and I searched for you both for the rest of the night but never found you again. In town for a week. Let’s connect.”
Martin later addressed the post during an interview on CBS’ The Talk, telling host Julie Chen that Gus was “so cute and clever”.
“He is a national hero, give me a break,” said Ricky. “Are we flattered? Yes, we are,” adding, “We will definitely connect.”
I didn’t want to come out [gay] as the silvermedallist from Sochi. I wanted to come out as the best freeskier in the world.