KISS WORTH MORE THAN AN OLYMPIC MEDAL?
Gus Kenworthy already owns a silver medal. This time, he traveled to the Olympics for the kiss.
As kisses go, the smooch with his boyfriend, actor Matt Wilkas, wasn’t very theatrical. It was a quick peck before Kenworthy snapped into his ski bindings to ride the rails and launch from the jumps at the Olympic slopestyle competition. The kiss was as sweet and innocent as “Lady and the Tramp,” rather than the seasoaked, hot-and-foamy lip lock by Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster in “From Here to Eternity.”
At a Winter Olympics where memorable made-in-America moments have been fewer and farther between than either the United States Olympic Committee or NBC, paying $963 million in rights fees for the Games in South Korea, would like, this kiss on television between a handsome freestyle skier and the man in his life added some PG-13 sizzle to the prime-time telecast.
“Part of me thinks: ‘Well, big deal.’ It was like the tiniest kiss. I could have made out with him had I known,” said Wilkas, unaware the buss was being beamed to the NBC audience
back in America. He cheered for Kenworthy while standing alongside the Colorado skier’s family and friends, who waved both U.S. and LGBT pride flags at the bottom of the slopestyle course.
From the start, and for better or worse, Kenworthy’s trip to the Olympics seemed to be more about flaunting the politics of social change than winning a spot on the podium as a freestyle skier.
With cameras in place to film a documentary chronicling nearly every move he made in South Korea, Kenworthy unabashedly used the Winter Games as a stage to showcase his new friendship with openly gay figure skater Adam Rippon and quarrel with Vice President Mike Pence on the issue of LGBT rights. The kiss with Wilkas fit perfectly with the rest of the script.
“Something I wanted at the last Olympics was to share a kiss with my boyfriend at the Olympics. But it was something I was too scared to do for myself,” said Kenworthy, who came out in 2015, a year after he won a silver medal in Sochi. “So to be able to do that, to be able to give him a kiss and have that affection broadcast for the world, is incredible. I think the only way to really change perceptions, break down homophobia and break down barriers is through representation.”
The Olympics are as political as the uniforms on the athletes’ backs, not to mention as unavoidable as the national an- thems played in salute to every winner of a gold medal. You might disagree with Kenworthy’s political stand, but can any red-blooded capitalist argue with him leveraging his Olympic fame in the name of politics and profit? Feats of athletic skill win the medals, but it’s the uniqueness of an athlete’s story that sells on Madison Avenue.
While U.S. teammate Nick Goepper, a slopestyle specialist from the Indiana flatland, struggled to attract funding to prepare for the 2018 Games, Kenworthy’s tale of blazing a new trail in the macho sports world made him attractive to heavyweight sponsors such as Visa, Toyota and Ralph Lauren.
Who’s the first American male to earn two Olympic medals in freestyle skiing? It’s Goepper, who claimed silver, by finishing second to Oystein Braaten of Norway.
But it was a pack of journalists, myself included, that watched the competition alongside Wilkas, because the drama of a kiss is easier to appreciate than the complexity of the tricks on the rails and ramps in Goepper’s medal-winning run, which had inscrutable descriptions such as “butter 720” and “switch rightside double misty 1260 mute grab.”
Got that? I don’t. Heck, who does? “Quite honestly, I don’t know a lot about the sport,” Wilkas said. “I’m always the idiot when it comes to sport. I think it looks pretty.”
But it was an ugly day on the hill for Kenworthy, who struggled with recent injuries to his thumb and hip. He demonstrated very little of the explosion or style that has made him a six-time world champion, and failed to complete any of his three runs in the finals without a major, score-wrecking error.
With his back to the slopestyle course, where he had finished dead last among the 12 finalists, as the late-afternoon sun began to slip toward the tree line. Kenworthy walked away from an Olympic competition that had been, for him, more about making a statement than sticking to sports.
“Win or lose, it’s not the thing that defines me,” Kenworthy said.
Failure to medal doesn’t mean as much to him as showing the world it’s OK to kiss your boyfriend on television.
“That’s definitely not something I had as a kid. I definitely didn’t see a gay athlete at the Olympics kissing their boyfriend,” Kenworthy said. “And I think if I had, it would have made it a lot easier.”
No matter where you stand on the issue — remove the sexual politics — and here’s the thing: After stopping to autograph the coats of young Korean volunteers who shrieked “I love you!” to Kenworthy, he was gone from the stadium and out of the glare of the spotlight.
Walking slowly down a snow-covered hill, Kenworthy was not a celebrated athlete. He was just a 26-year-old guy from Colorado in need of a hug, surrounded by the people who love him most: his father Peter, his mom Pip and his partner Matt.
Not every moment of an Olympian’s life is as bright and shiny as gold, silver or bronze. So you tell me: What’s more valuable? The medal? Or a kiss?