Team GB’s Gus Kenworthy: Beijing shouldn’t host Winter Olympics due to ‘ATROCIOUS human rights’

Gus Kenworthy has regretted keeping quiet in the past and has no desire to do so again. For all the caution, for all the silence around him, he is looking square in the eye of the elephant in this room.

‘I’m probably a dumb a** for doing it but I can’t keep my mouth shut,’ he says. And all credit to him. The topic of human rights is the distressing backdrop to these Winter Olympics, but, for a range of understandable reasons, there have been almost no athletes of any nationality willing to discuss it.

Certainly, there have been none from this Team GB contingent of 50. Or rather there have been none until now, with one of Britain’s brightest medal hopes speaking out ahead of the Games, which will be declared open on Friday.

Team GB ski hopeful Gus Kenworthy has spoken out about gay rights as he plots gold at Beijing 2022

Kenworthy is a rare example of an athlete speaking out against China’s human rights record

‘I don’t think that China should be allowed to host,’ Kenworthy tells Sportsmail. ‘I don’t think that any nation should be allowed to host the Olympics, this gathering point of the world, with everyone in the world fixated on you and pouring in money and attention, if you have atrocious human rights stances.’

Kenworthy has read up on this. He knows the grave concerns of groups like Human Rights Watch, who have vocally accused China of ‘crimes against humanity’ in their treatment of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang. They are concerns that extend to Tibet and Hong Kong.

It is also not lost on the 30-year-old that he will be competing in a country where, as an openly-gay man, same-sex marriage is not recognised, nor are there legal protections against discrimination. It is not illegal to be gay there, but neither are all people equal.

Keeping quiet around those subjects is not in Kenworthy’s nature, and hasn’t been since he came out in 2015. He was racing for the US back then, for whom he won a silver medal in the freeski slopestyle at Sochi 2014, and it was in the aftermath of those Winter Olympics that he realised he wanted his voice to be heard. 

Same-sex marriage is banned in China and Kenworthy (right) says it shouldn’t host the Games

That has shaped his decision to leave the safety of the pack now and discuss the thorniest issues around China.

‘Heading to Sochi we had media training specifically about not speaking out against Russia and the fact that there was anti LGBTQ legislature in place,’ he says. ‘I was in the closet at the time and so I feel like I didn’t have the gall to say anything. I regretted it.

‘I feel like we are all given a voice and it’s important to use it. I just feel like since the Olympics is about the world coming together, it should be about more than money, and that a country shouldn’t have the opportunity to host or sometimes even compete if they have poor stances on human rights issues.

‘I think that the IOC has the power to create change in those countries for the better and could easily do that.’

The Brit-American believes the IOC is capable of creating change in its host countries

It is a commendable stance from an ebullient character who has tended to stand apart. In the context of his performances, he spent the better part of a decade near the front of the freestyle skiing world, with five medals at the X Games. His broader hinterland, which includes acting credits, has put him among the most well-known figures in snowsport – his Instagram following alone is in excess of 1.2million.

Quite how he finds himself competing for Team GB is one of those modern sporting scenarios that divides opinion. He was born in Chelmsford to an English mother and an American father, but after relocating to Colorado aged two, he spent the most successful years of his career competing for the US. 

It is tempting to wonder if his 2019 recruitment by GB Snowsport was linked to the relative ease of a place in the British team.

For his part, he says: ‘I thought about it heading into 2014 just because the qualification (for Team GB) would be so much easier for me. I didn’t do it for a number of reasons and the US ski team was more established and it was going to offer better training for me. 

The Chelmsford-born Olympian switched allegiance from Team USA to GB three years ago

‘Heading into a third Games (after finishing 12th at Pyeongchang 2018), there’s been a lot of things that have made me think which one I would want to represent. I thought it would be kind of poetic to do it for my mom.’

Eyebrows might raise around the fluidity of nationality in sport, but Team GB will see it as a strong acquisition of an established star. In charting Kenworthy’s rise and life to this point, it is interesting to ponder the role of Tom Daley, with whom he has become friends. Kenworthy credits a video made by the gold medal-winning diver as central to his own decision to come out.

‘When I was in the closet, I watched him coming out on YouTube,’ he says. ‘For most of my life, I didn’t want to accept that (being gay) about myself. By the time I watched the video I was looking for any inspiration I could get and Tom definitely was one of them.’

He adds: ‘I have said it before in motivational speeches but I really believe coming out gave me a huge uplift in my career. I was so nervous about getting all this attention for something unrelated to skiing, like, “Oh God, I hope I don’t suck this season if I do this”. But it was the single best season of my career in 2016. I was just riding on a high.’

Kenworthy will have the highest-profile of any Team GB athlete at the current Beijing Games

While Kenworthy will have the biggest global profile of any Brit at the Games, his form has been intermittent in the build-up. The double hit of a serious concussion and Covid in October severely hurt his preparations, but Kenworthy is bullish on his prospects in the halfpipe discipline in what will be his final event as a sportsman.

‘This will be my last go,’ he says. ‘I’m like past my expiration, hanging on a little bit, like the milk that kind of smells funny, but it’s probably fine. I have no interest in competing after the Olympics, because I want to go when I can still compete.

‘It hasn’t been the smoothest preparation but I am getting there, feeling more like myself. I have two runs that I’ve had in mind for the last year and a half – an A run and a B run. With the B run, if I pull it off, I very much think I’m in medal contention. The A run is fighting for gold.

‘I’m not a “make up the numbers” kind of person.’ In a variety of ways.