Olympic freeskier Gus Kenworthy, the 2014 slopestyle silver medalist and the first openly gay action sports star, has returned to training in hopes of competing in his fourth straight Winter Olympics next February.
"After taking a step away, I realized I miss skiing and I really want to compete again," Kenworthy said in an exclusive interview with ESPN. "I didn't know if I would be able to come back after three-and-a-half years, but I knew I wouldn't be able to after seven and a half. So, it's this Olympics or nothing. I'm never going to have this opportunity again."
Kenworthy, who was born in Great Britain and moved to Colorado with his family when he was 2, will represent Team GB for the second time. He competed in slopestyle for Team USA in Sochi in 2014, becoming part of the third U.S. podium sweep in Winter Olympic history, and again in Pyeongchang in 2018, where he was one of the first two openly gay men to compete for Team USA at the Winter Olympics.
The next year, Kenworthy switched his allegiance to Great Britain and began focusing on halfpipe skiing, as well as an acting career. At the 2022 Beijing Games, he competed for Team GB and finished eighth in the halfpipe before retiring from professional skiing.
"My whole goal in China was to land the run I had been training as best as I could, and I didn't do that," Kenworthy said. "I had already announced that it was going to be my last contest. I was ready to be done, and I walked away with my head held high. But it wasn't what I wanted. It was hard to walk away on a sour note."
Kenworthy spent the next few years focusing on acting, modeling and philanthropy, but said skiing still tugged at the back of his mind.
"I would be out at a party and someone would be like, 'What do you do now?'" Kenworthy said. "And I wouldn't know how to answer. Saying anything other than, 'I'm a professional skier,' felt wrong coming out of my mouth. It was weird to navigate. I felt depressed at times. I felt a loss of my sense of identity."
Last summer, he began thinking seriously about getting back in a halfpipe but was worried about injuries. He suffered two significant concussions in the lead-up to Beijing, and contracted COVID-19 shortly before the Games. He spent months dealing with persistent nausea, vertigo and exhaustion.
"We couldn't get to the bottom of it," he said. "We didn't know if the symptoms were from COVID or the concussions. It totally tainted my Olympic experience. I was skiing well, and then my training basically stopped."
It took more than a year post-Olympics for the symptoms to subside.
"It's still my biggest fear," Kenworthy said about hitting his head. "I'm scared, but it's like any risk. You can't dwell on it. You do what you can to try and mitigate the risks and perform as safely as possible."
Despite his fears, Kenworthy decided to return when the reasons felt right to him.
"I don't feel like I'm going back into it because I don't know who I am otherwise," he said. "I'm going back into it because I can still do it, and because I want to."
A couple months ago, Kenworthy told his management team he was taking a year away from acting to focus on skiing full-time. When he called the head coach at Team GB to say he was thinking of returning, Kenworthy said he responded with encouragement and enthusiasm, as well as a healthy dose of reality.
"He said, 'If anyone can do it, it's you. We wish you the best and you have our support, but we have absolutely zero budget for you,'" Kenworthy said.
For now, Kenworthy is financing his Olympic run out of pocket, including travel and hiring a coach, starting with a four-day pro camp in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., last week. It was his first time in a halfpipe since Beijing.
"I was honestly nervous," Kenworthy said about his first day in the Mammoth pipe. "I was also nervous what people would say. Maybe that's silly, but it's a younger generation now. Part of me was like, am I being delusional thinking I can do this? How is it gonna feel? And then as soon as I put my pipe skis back on and was back on snow, it felt so good, and it felt so right."
With pros from around the world looking on, Kenworthy landed two straight airs and a 540 in his first run through the halfpipe. By the end of the first day, he was landing double corks. "I felt stronger on my skis than I did four years ago," he said. "The whole experience was amazing. I felt so respected by everyone who was there training and welcomed in a way that I wasn't expecting. It reignited my love for it."
If Kenworthy makes the 2026 Olympics, his will be one of several high-profile comeback stories in Milano-Cortina. He will be 34 in October, and he says watching other athletes return to competition later in life has fueled his desire to do the same.
"I definitely looked at Lindsey [Vonn]'s story and was very inspired by it," Kenworthy said. "Watching her get a World Cup podium again, I was like, I want that."
Kenworthy will compete in four World Cup events before the team is named in January. He'll start in China in December, his first contest in nearly four years, followed by the Copper Grand Prix in Colorado. Team GB requires that he earn finishes in the top 30 percent of the field at two of the four events.
"I feel pretty good about my chances if I'm able to stay healthy," Kenworthy said.
Kenworthy will continue his training next month at a camp at Mount Hood, Oregon, and then join pro camps in New Zealand and Saas Fe, Switzerland, in the fall. He already has in mind a halfpipe run that he wants to land at the Olympics.
"I want to medal [in Italy]. I don't know how else to say it," he said. "I don't want to say that's what success looks like because then I'm setting myself up for the possibility of this experience not to feel successful. But that is my dream. If I qualify for the Games and make it back to the Olympics and land my run, that will feel like success. That's what I didn't get in Beijing."