Kenworthy, Gus (1991-…), was a British American freestyle skier. Kenworthy competed in the ski halfpipe, slopestyle, and big air events. The halfpipe is an acrobatic event performed in a deep trough. In slopestyle, competitors perform on special courses that feature various obstacles. Big air involves a long, high jump during which the skier performs acrobatic moves. Kenworthy won the silver medal in men’s slopestyle at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, as a member of the United States Olympic team. In 2015, Kenworthy publicly announced that he was gay. As part of the U.S. team at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Kenworthy and the figure skater Adam Rippon became the first openly gay American male athletes to compete in the Winter Olympic Games. Kenworthy competed in the men’s slopestyle in the 2018 Olympics, finishing 12th. He competed in the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, China, as a member of the British team. He finished 8th in men’s halfpipe. Kenworthy retired from skiing after the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.
Augustus Richard Kenworthy was born in Chelmsford, Essex, in the United Kingdom on Oct. 1, 1991. His family emigrated to Telluride, Colorado, in 1993, when Gus was two years old. Kenworthy was a skilled skier by the time he graduated from Telluride High School in 2010. For eight consecutive seasons, from 2011 through 2018, he was the Association of Freeskiing Professionals (AFP) World Tour men’s overall champion. The AFP was a major international skiing organization. It calculated yearly rankings and named champions based on results of a series of approved competitions.
Kenworthy is also an actor. In 2019, he appeared in the role of Chet Clancy, a former Olympic athlete, in a number of episodes in the television drama “American Horror Story.”
