Pyeongchang’s LGBT Olympic athletes, including Utah’s Brittany Bowe, have become the role models they never had growing up

Gangneung, South Korea • Adam Rippon paused. He doesn’t normally pause. But he did here. Days after taking these 2018 Olympic Winter Games by storm, helping U.S. figure skating earn bronze in the team event with a tantalizing performance in the men’s free skate, a Finnish journalist asked the 29-year-old for his advice to young athletes who may or may not be struggling with coming to terms with their sexuality.

“Being gay and being an athlete, it doesn’t f---ing matter,” he said. “It really doesn’t. Like, being an athlete, you need to go out there, you need to be strong, and I think sometimes people might not perceive gay men as not being strong or being fighters. It’s not true. Being an athlete takes a lot of guts, takes a lot of courage, and that’s what you need to remember. Your sexuality has absolutely nothing to do with this.”

Rippon is part of a growing number of LGBT winter athletes who at times face more questions about their sexual orientation than how they’re feeling heading into a medal round. And here at the Olympics, where opinions and stories are shared far and wide and the world listens, it can be a balancing act between focusing on sport and being the athletic role models they never had growing up.

“In so many articles, it’s always ‘gay Olympian Adam Rippon,’ and I wear that title really proudly,” he said, “but I’m not a gay Olympian. I’m just an Olympian. And now I’m an Olympic medalist. And I also happen to be gay. That’s part of who I am.”

U.S. freeskiing silver medalist Gus Kenworthy announced he was gay on the cover of ESPN the Magazine in 2015 after winning his fifth straight world championship in ski slopestyle. Kenworthy, who was born in the United Kingdom but raised in Colorado, has said how taking that public leap was terrifying at the time.

“But I was overwhelmed by the amount of support I got when I did come out,” Kenworthy said a few months back as he prepared for his first Olympics as an openly gay man. “I’ve had people who had said hurtful things in the past with regard to my sexuality call me after the article came out and be like, ‘Hey, I’m so sorry for the things I said.’ … Those phone calls hit home. They made me feel really loved and accepted.”

Cyd Zeigler, the co-founder of OutSports.com, said the Winter Olympics has a small number of openly gay athletes compared to the Summer Games, which feature much deeper athlete pools and feature more disciplines. Zeigler said more than 50 out athletes participated in the 2014 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. He knows of about 15 in South Korea.

But athletes are feeling more comfortable embracing the pressures of being out in public and competing at the Olympics, he said.

“Pyeongchang is double what they had in Sochi,” Zeigler said.

Media attention is growing, too, in part because there are more gay American male athletes. Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. all have had openly gay athletes. Rippon, Zeigler said, is “stealing the show” here.

“A flamboyant, witty, sarcastic, gay male American athlete,” he said, “that’s unexpected.”

What defines the Olympics for him, Kenworthy said, is helping others see someone who could end up being a reflection of themselves. Like so many gay athletes, Kenworthy said he wanted a hero growing up, someone to look up to, to relate with.

“Since coming out, I’m definitely like ‘the gay skier’ now,” he said. “That’s fine. I knew I was stepping into that role when I did that. In some ways, I don’t care if that label sticks. I very much am the gay skier. I took the step to come out publicly and decided to wear that badge proudly. I’m so happy I did. My life has been so much better since I did that.

“I think having people in the public eye allows other people to feel comfortable living authentically.”

Rippon has been asked the same over and over again since arriving in South Korea. He can’t even open up his Twitter account. There are too many notifications and follow requests that it’s been crashing on him. Rippon said he’s never received so many messages of support, of how his story resonates with others, but also on the flip side, he’s never had so many messages from people saying they’re cheering for him to fall during competition.

“Which is darling,” he said.

“I have this amazing opportunity to go out onto the ice and show people that I’m still this serious athlete and have this huge personality,” Rippon said, “but I can put that all together, and that’s what gives me strength to go out there in front of millions of people and skate.”

Brittany Bowe stood on the other side of the metal railing fielding questions about her intro to these Olympics in South Korea. Midway through discussing her fifth-place finish in the women’s 1,500-meter long-track speedskating event, the 29-year-old former world record-holder fielded a question not typically posed in the mixed zone.

The American speedskater was asked about the vice president. The Ocala, Fla., native, who has lived full time in Utah since 2010, was asked if she had an opinion on Mike Pence. Not about his political policies, necessarily. But about his brief stopover in Pyeongchang, the host city of these 2018 Winter Games.

She was asked because Bowe is part of a contingent of gay athletes here competing for medals. Pence was brought up because Rippon said in the weeks leading up to the 2018 Games that he had no desire to meet the vice president upon his visit, citing anti-gay material from Pence’s former congressional campaign website from 2000. A national story berthed, Pence alleged #FAKENEWS in a tweet after Rippon spoke extensively to USA Today and the momentum behind the story hasn’t waned.

Bowe politely declined to comment, but she said to be mentioned alongside the likes of Kenworthy and Rippon means a lot. She’s never been outspoken about anything other than speedskating, she said, but “to be in a class with them is obviously an honor.”

There has been an outpouring of support the past two weeks, Bowe said.

“You know, it’s great to have a whole other community that’s supporting me alongside the community back home in Florida and Utah,” she said. “So super grateful for the support from all angles.”

After a team spokesman asked for any more skating-related questions, Bowe stayed in the mixed zone and talked for a while longer. She said her sister is a Rippon superfan. Zeigler said Bowe, despite having perhaps the best athletic performance at these Games so far, hasn’t garnered much attention compared to Rippon or even Kenworthy, who competes later in the week.

“But let me say this, to heck with the media,” Zeigler said. “If Brittany Bowe reaches one young girl living in a Mormon household in Provo, Utah, with her performances at the Olympics, then nothing else really matters.”