Openly gay figure skater Adam Rippon wins bronze at Winter Olympics

12th February 2018

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“Now I’m actually an Olympian! They have the footage!”

American figure skater Adam Rippon won Team USA a bronze medal in his Olympic debut this weekend.

The 28-year-old – who became the first openly gay athlete to compete at the Winter Olympics – gave a stunning performance to Colyplay’s O and Arrival of the Birds by Cinematic Orchestra, earning a score of 172.98.

Canadian skater Eric Radford won gold, making Radford the first openly gay athlete to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics, followed by Russia who took silver.

Shortly after, Rippon was quoted as saying: “Now I’m actually an Olympian! They have the footage!”

“I’m so proud to be on this team,” Rippon he added on the NBC broadcast. “I went out there and I did my job.”

When asked how he felt on the ice, he told NBC: “I want to throw up, I want to go over to the judges and say ‘can I just have a Xanax and a quick drink?'”

Earlier this month, the Olympian said he’d refuse a meeting with US Vice President Mike Pence because of his anti-LGBTQ record.

“You mean Mike Pence, the same Mike Pence that funded gay conversion therapy? I’m not buying it,” Rippon said to USA Today.

“If it were before my event, I would absolutely not go out of my way to meet somebody who I felt has gone out of their way to not only show that they aren’t a friend of a gay person but that they think that they’re sick.

“I wouldn’t go out of my way to meet somebody like that.”

Rippon added: “I don’t think he has a real concept of reality. To stand by some of the things that Donald Trump has said and for Mike Pence to say he’s a devout Christian man is completely contradictory.

“If he’s okay with what’s being said about people and Americans and foreigners and about different countries that are being called ‘shitholes,’ I think he should really go to church.”