American figure skater noted as the United States’ first openly gay athlete to win a medal at a Winter Olympics. At the 2018 Pyeongchang Games he won an Olympic bronze medal as part of the figure skating team event.
Earlier in his career, he won the 2008 and 2009 World Junior Championships, the 2007–2008 Junior Grand Prix Final, and the 2008 U.S junior national title. Rippon was the 2010 Four Continents champion and 2016 U.S. national champion.
Rippon’s signature move is a 3Lz that he executes with both arms above his head, colloquially dubbed the “Rippon Lutz”. He is capable of performing the 3Lz-2T-2Lo combination with one hand over his head in all three jumps (colloquially the “‘Tano Lutz” after Brian Boitano, who invented the move). He is also one of the few men able to do a competent lay-back spin.
The oldest of six children, he was born with severe hearing loss but underwent surgery at Yale University just before his first birthday, allowing him to hear almost perfectly.
On 2 October 2015, Rippon publicly came out as gay. In his memoir Beautiful on the Outside, Rippon revealed that, before coming out as gay, he briefly dated South Korean Olympic champion Yuna Kim while both were training in Toronto. Rippon and his husband, Jussi-Pekka Kajaala, were married on 31 December 2021. The two met on Tinder in 2018.
Link to Wikipedia biography