Today we celebrate the first day of Pride Month by honoring past and present LGBTQ+ skaters who stood proud in the face of adversity and let their most authentic selves shine. Thank you for your courage and the road you have paved for future generations.
Buoyed by his first U.S. title in January 2016, Adam Rippon arrived at the following season with singular purpose: To be true to himself. So as he took to center ice for his short program at Skate America®, held that year in the Chicago suburbs, he knew the one thing that was catching the audience's -- and judges' -- eyes: His shoulders.
Yes, his bare shoulders were causing a ripple of whispers.
"A lot of the hesitation that I got after coming out (in 2015) was that people thought I would be judged differently," Rippon said in a recent interview. "They were afraid of what might happen."
Sure enough, after Rippon skated to a bronze-medal finish at the first of the season's Grand Prix Series events, he heard he had "ruffled some feathers" of American officials. Backstage after the free skate, he braced himself as a judge strode down the hallway in the direction of Adam and his coach, Rafael Arutunian.
"In my head I go, 'Here it comes!'" Rippon remembers. "I was expecting ridicule. And then the judge says to Raf: 'The tank top didn't have enough crystals! Adam wasn't over the top enough! If he's going to go for it, go all the way!'
"I was blown away."
Rippon had every right to be. For decades, figure skating had held onto certain gender ideals and the negative stereotypes they subsequently carried along with them. By doing something as simple as baring his shoulders, Rippon had helped move the sport another toe-pick forward, something the LGBTQ+ community has been trying to do in figure skating for the past 25-plus years.
This is the story of how (some of) that came to be.
A layered story
After winning the historic "Battle of the Brians" at the 1988 Olympic Winter Games, Brian Boitano recalled thinking he would "never want to share" his sexuality with those outside of his inner circle: "It wasn't even something I had ever entertained."
"I think figure skating fell in line with the rest of the world in terms of sports," said pairs skater Randy Gardner, who, with partner Tai Babilonia, was a World champion 1979. "There were a few 'cool' people in our sport, perhaps people that would have supported an out skater, but in general, it was a 'stay in the closet' generation. I knew other skaters that were gay and even officials and people in the press. I felt like it was our own secret little society."
It was a secret -- open or not -- for years and decades.
Boitano chose to not come out in his competitive career, which saw a renaissance at the 1994 Games in Lillehammer, Norway, after his 1988 Olympic gold medal. He didn't publicly share his sexual orientation until 2014, when he was named to President Barack Obama's Olympic delegation for the Sochi Games.
"Quad King" Timothy Goebel, the 2002 Salt Lake Games bronze medalist, also didn't come out until after his competitive career.
Johnny Weir, who shook traditionalists with his "The Swan" short program in the 2005-06 Olympic season (among many others), didn't do so until after he competed in two Olympic Games.
"When I was coming up in the sport, I was constantly critiqued by officials who would come monitor my progress," Weir wrote in an email. "I was told to wear more masculine costumes, strengthen my hands and wrists while I performed, not to dye my hair and so on. … I never lived in a closet, but (early in my career) I had to decide quickly between wanting to succeed in sports and living an authentic life. I chose to live authentically
AND succeed in sports."
"There was definitely tension between my sexuality and the pressure to conform to the 'idealized version' of how we conceptualized a champion," added Goebel in an email. "As athletes, we were expected to always portray this veneer or perfection: refined, flawless and straight."
Goebel continued: "It was my understanding, and I'm confident it was an understanding widely held by most of my contemporaries, that being openly gay would negatively impact the ability of an athlete to reach their full potential. It is imperative to highlight here that I mean that across all sports and disciplines, in my generation and for prior generations - this was not something unique to the skating community. I believe with absolute certainty that, had I come out during the ascent of my career, I would have achieved less competitive success than I ultimately did. My time was too early - not by societal standards, perhaps - but athletes are held to different (and by that I mean 'higher') standards, and that progress is necessarily slower."
Like many movements from within the LGBTQ+ community, progress was being made in subtle ways, and the results are shining through in the current generation.
Carrying the torch
When Rippon was a teenager, he remembers receiving feedback on his skating that he says had nothing to do with him. He was told to be stronger, to skate like Michael Weiss and Todd Eldredge.
To be less effeminate.
"There was a hidden layer of, 'don't be so gay,'" Rippon said. "It kind of sucked. Oftentimes, this feedback was from a gay official or judge. In a way, I know that they were trying to protect me, but it was almost them putting out their own issues with homophobia that they faced so that I wouldn't have to face them myself. The critiques weren't wrong, (but) there are triggering words if you're in the closet."
Pairs athlete Timothy LeDuc, 30, said he faced similar prejudices early in his career. LeDuc, who came out to his family and friends when he was 18, stepped away from competitive skating in 2014 in part due a homophobic interaction with a potential partner.
"I just could not get over the fact that I was reaching a roadblock in my career for something that I have no control over," said LeDuc, 30. "That somebody was correlating being gay with being weak. That's a negative stereotype that a lot of queer people deal with, that they're second-class or not as good."
But in 2016, LeDuc found his on-ice match in Ashley Cain-Gribble and surrounded himself with a fully supportive team, which has paid off. The team earned the 2019 U.S. title, making LeDuc the first openly gay pairs U.S. champion.
Ice dancer Joe Johnson, who came out as gay in 2013, and partner Karina Manta, who came out as bisexual in 2018, made history in the fall of that year as the first out LGBTQ+ ice dance team.
Johnson says his biggest impediment to coming out wasn't that people didn't know he was gay, but rather that they already did.
Once he was out, however, he found that his fears were almost entirely unfounded, and that the occasional "I knew it" was more than worth the payoff.
Coming out, he says, was like a dark cloud had lifted.
"It was just interesting how much easier everything started to get when I accepted that one big thing about myself that I was afraid of," Johnson said. "I got better at skating. My friendships improved. My willingness to sit alone with nothing on, no music or any distractions and just be alone with my thoughts was so much easier. Life just started to get progressively easier. I was so fortunate."
With Rippon's retirement following the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018, and Manta and Johnson retiring from competition in 2019, LeDuc and
Amber Glenn, who came out as bisexual prior to the 2020 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships, are currently the only out figure skaters competing for Team USA.
LeDuc, who said he struggled with self-hatred for a long time, now embraces his role as trailblazer and role model for future generations.
"There have been many queer athletes that have come before me, but not all of them have had the luxury of being out," LeDuc said. "I think of Randy Gardner and Rudy Galindo, who both won pairs titles in the '70s and '90s. But I'm growing up in a different world. It's a little bit easier to be out and the reason for that is because of those people who came before me, and I stand on their shoulders."
[Note: After switching to singles skating, Galindo come out in 1996. More on that below.]
'They never said anything to me'
Society has helped push the conversation forward, of course, but athletes like Gardner ('70s and '80s), Boitano ('80s and '90s), Goebel ('90s and '00s) and Weir (the 2000s) were doing their part in different ways, much like Rippon on that Skate America® day in 2016.
While Gardner described a "secret little society," Boitano said he never tried to hide who he was. His sexual orientation, however, was never outrightly discussed.
"I never had anybody in my life that had a problem with it. And if I did have people, they never said anything to me," Boitano said. "I felt empowered by (my sexual orientation). I felt very confident with who I was. I was very happy. I didn't ever think, 'I wish I
wasn't gay.' I never regretted it. Nothing."
Yet that still didn't empower Boitano, an Olympic gold medalist, to publicly come out. He described the economic pressures that were heaped onto him after his '88 gold medal, a certain expectation that an exhibition tour and pro-event headliner shouldn't be telling skating's target market -- women -- that he was attracted to men.
The brave outlier that many skaters point to today is Rudy Galindo, the 1996 U.S. champion, who came out in the book
Inside Edge, by Christine Brennan. It was released just weeks before Galindo would be crowned America's first openly gay national champion in his hometown of San Jose, California.
"Rudy broke down so many walls for me to be able to be artistic and free and strong on the ice and off it," Weir said in email. "I am thankful to the skaters who came before me, like Rudy."
Galindo, who is now a skating coach, chose not to be interviewed for this article, saying he stopped speaking out about his sexual orientation eight years ago.
"(Rudy being a trailblazer) is really important, it's important for visibility," LeDuc said.
Follow the skating brick road
There was no formula, but in the time between Galindo's '96 title and Weir's third consecutive triumph in 2006, the tides had begun to turn. And while Weir didn't come out publicly during his intense skating rivalry with Evan Lysacek, he said he never felt like he really needed to.
"As someone who never felt 'in,' I don't think it was a big secret that I was gay," Weir said. "Being gay is an important part of my life, but it is not all that I am. When you come out, other people boil your whole life down to being gay. My goal for our community is that nobody has to come out because they will have never 'been in.'"
Weir pushed the sport forward with his more effeminate costuming, challenged judges, questioned the status quo and skated to music normally reserved for female competitors.
When Weir's career crossed paths with Rippon's in the late 2000s, a proverbial baton was passed. Still, it would be several more years before Rippon, being interviewed with close friend Ashley Wagner for
SKATING Magazine, shared a passing comment that amounted to his coming out to the skating public. While he was comfortable with the comment, Rippon didn't want it to be the headline.
"I said that I wanted (my sexual orientation) tucked in the story," Rippon said. "It felt like
part of my story at that point. I didn't realize that -- down the road -- there was going to be a bigger impact. If I skated and there was a (current) skater like Guillaume (Cizeron) who was a World champion and had come out at the top of their game, it would have been a completely different ballgame. Nobody did it, no one was out. There were skaters who were out once they were done skating, but you didn't do it while still competing. That was it. The rule was that you didn't want to ruffle any feathers."
Then came 2016 and the bare shoulders. And, also, a strong shift for the women in the sport to feel like they could be heard, too.
Blazing their own trail
When Manta came out in 2018, she not only became part of the first out ice dance team, but was also the first out female figure skater to compete for Team USA.
"When I was younger, I remember Googling 'lesbian figure skaters.' 'Bi female figure skaters.' 'Queer female figure skaters.' Like, looking for queer figure skaters on the Internet, and not finding any, and being absolutely terrified," Manta said. "This was before Fumie (Suguri). She came out in like 2014. I love Fumie, and I think that was really powerful when she came out, and it was the first name that I could hold onto. But before that, it makes you feel like you can't exist, when you don't see it."
Manta ultimately decided to come out when she and Johnson were assigned to 2018 Skate America®, their first Grand Prix. She'd been dating Aleena Gomez for a year and had promised her that she could be in the crowd – publicly – as her girlfriend.
Manta and Gomez recorded a video in which Manta came out by reading a spoken word poem, and ultimately posted the video to social media three weeks before Skate America®.
"You just have all these things that you build up in your head that you don't know how people are going to react to, and I think for the most part everybody was so kind," Manta said. "And so that was pretty cool, because I was terrified, and I think almost everyone really supported me when I needed it."
Manta and Johnson retired from competitive figure skating in April.
Glenn picked up the mantle when she came out in a local Dallas publication last December.
"Everything was so positive. I was truly worried about getting some hate or some naysayers, (but) every conversation I had was super positive," Glenn said. "I was pretty surprised that there was a woman who had a pride flag at Four Continents (in South Korea in February). I waved to her before the short program."
The support, Glenn says, is far-reaching. At the Friends of Figure Skating brunch at the U.S. Championships in January, she was approached by a number of LGBTQ couples.
"There were these two women in their 40s or 50s who told me that they had been together for a really long time and that they can appreciate someone being their true selves," Glenn said. "They were these incredibly powerful, professional women and honestly, they inspired me. Knowing that these successful people support me in such a way, that gives me a lot of strength."
As older generations inspire them, their impact could be just as far-reaching for the generations to come, whose Google searches will no longer turn up empty.
"I think for many years, I was so uncomfortable with myself in skating, and I genuinely thought I had to be a different person to be successful," Manta said. "And so I hoped to show that it is possible to be successful and still be authentically yourself. The figure skating world can feel very narrow sometimes, so the power to expand that a little bit is exciting."
Not done yet
The work to acceptance, of course, is by no means done, as stereotypes still exist within the sport. But visibility is one of the LGBTQ+ community's most powerful tool. An out ice dance team. A bisexual woman. A U.S. champion pairs skater. An Olympic gold medalist. An NBC commentator. A pairs champion from the '70s. The first out singles champion. A 2002 Olympic bronze medalist. A household name from PyeongChang.
This list goes on and on.
"To be able to now be out and to be at the top of my sport is really meaningful because I know that there are young queer people who need to be able to turn the TV on and see queer athletes," LeDuc said. "And (for them) to know that you do not have to change yourself, and you do not have to doubt yourself for any reason, and you can still be the best.
"You can still be a champion."
This story was originally published on June, 25, 2020.
