DEEP DIVE

Olympics Skier Gus Kenworthy’s Cheeky Instagram Will Keep You Warm During the Winter Games

Meet USA’s thirst-trappiest Olympian.

Feb. 10, 2018

@guskenworthy

Gus Kenworthy, the American freestyle skier competing in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, is definitely a man to watch, both on the slopes and off. The champion skier took home the silver medal for the men’s slope style event in freestyle skiing at the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, and has won three medals at the X Games since 2013. The 26-year-old even hit the reality television circuit in 2017 with a brief stint on The Challenge: Champs vs. Pros, an all-star reality competition series on MTV.

But there’s a reason the skier has over 645,000 followers on Instagram, and it certainly is not just because of the fact that he’s competed in the Winter Olympics. The skier has quite the, uh, cheeky presence on his Instagram, which is filled to the brim with not only shirtless thirst traps, but a few bottomless ones as well, all of which would cause any follower to ask themselves, When did Kenworthy transition from regular Olympian to king of the outdoors thirst trap? There are actually so many of these half naked photos Kenworthy’s posted on his Instagram that it would be impossible to include them all, but before we get to that, let’s go back in time to the beginning of Kenworthy’s account.

Before the Olympic medals, the celebrity hobnobbing, the tattoos, and the public declarations of love for his boyfriend the actor Matt Wilkas (more on that later), if you scroll all the way back on Kenworthy’s account you will find that he once used Instagram the way we all used Instagram in 2012—by posting banal landscape photos and using too many hashtags.

Kenworthy also won praise for coming out in an interview with ESPN in 2015 at the age of 24. The statement was touted as a bold move for the skier, who was named the first action sports athlete to publicly come out as gay. Kenworthy also received words of encouragement from the legendary Billie Jean King on Twitter and Hillary Clinton, who told the crowd at the 2018 Makers Conference that she was “excited that Adam Rippon and Gus Kenworthy will be the first openly gay Olympians for the American team.”

Kenworthy is also never one to miss an opportunity to make a pun or play on words. “I’m now a minister or father or whatever – you can just call me daddy,” he captioned in a photo of the wedding ceremony he performed between his two best friends. In a selfie with Jamie Dornan, Kenworthy captioned it “My sub,” which is clearly a reference to the Fifty Shades franchise. Somewhere along Kenworthy’s journey to the Winter Olympics, he also became a comedian.

Since good things come to those who wait, here are the photos you’ve been holding out for all this time. Please enjoy this curated micro collection of Kenworthy’s thirst traps—but just know there will probably be a lot more where these came from in the next few weeks.