In another installment of Things You Probably Didn’t Know About, let’s get to know more about the Olympian Gus Kenworthy, shall we?
Gus was born on October 1, 1991 in London, United Kingdom, and his full name is Augustus Richard Kenworthy. His father Peter is American while his mother Pip is British, and his parents got divorced when he was 5.
His family moved to Telluride, Colorado when he was 2 years old, and Gus began skiing at the age of 3. The professional skier has two older brothers named Hugh and Nick, whom he was in constant competition with when it came to skiing.
Gus’ mother shared in a previous interview that he used to ask his skiing coach, “Did I do that better than Nick? Better than Hugh?” whenever he learned a new move on the snow. Moreover, the 31-year-old athlete, actor and YouTuber is a two-time Olympian in the years 2014 and 2018, and he is also an Olympic silver medalist.
In 2015, Gus almost quit skiing after failing to win any medals at the X Games in Aspen. However, he didn’t push through with it after taking his father and agent’s advice to “give it another year” and “see where the cards fall.”
Lo and behold, he won the 2015 Visa U.S. Freeskiing Grand Prix halfpipe contest in Park City, Utah in only a month after his big loss. Aside from being a professional skier, Gus is also very talented at skateboarding.
Another thing that happened in 2015 was that he publicly came out as gay in an ESPN The Magazine cover story. Gus admitted that he was afraid that he would lose endorsements for the 2018 Winter Olympics, but the exact opposite happened, as he received endorsements from big companies including Visa, Toyota, Ralph Lauren, and Deloitte.
Also, Gus posed nude in ESPN The Magazine‘s 2017 Body Issue, and it was EVERYTHING we never knew we needed! 😉 And since we’re already on the topic of his thirst-worthy pics, let’s take a moment to admire these steamy snaps as well…
Sources: cosmopolitan.com, teamusa.org
As a younger gay athlete, I look up to the older gay athletes & am thankful they have been out most their careers.
Gus is an incredibly handsome and muscular man, I strongly believe he treats us aging Queer men with high respect.