Gus Kenworthy

If you want to speak to Gus Kenworthy three weeks before the Winter Olympics, you'll find him halfway up a mountain in Colorado, taking a break from training in a slopeside Starbucks. "There’s a Starbucks everywhere now," he says with a laugh as he rotates his phone to find a decent Zoom angle. The 30-year-old freestyle skier, who made history in 2015 when he became the first action sports star to come out as gay, is preparing for his third and final games – and first since joining Team GB. It’s a milestone moment for Kenworthy on several levels, not least because he’s planning to explore other career paths once it’s over. As an actor, he already has a role in a Ryan Murphy series – 2019’s slasher pastiche American Horror Story: 1984 – to his name. He’s also appeared as a guest judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Kenworthy, the son of an English mother and American father, was born in Chelmsford, Essex, but grew up in Colorado after the family moved stateside when he was two. For this reason, switching allegiance from Team USA, with