Kiss and Cry Chronicles: Adam Rippon Appreciation Edition

In this special edition of Kiss and Cry Chronicles, we celebrate the Olympic delight that is U.S. men’s skater Adam Rippon.

Adam Rippon is a national treasure and in a column that celebrates the emotions, humanity and social media of figure skating, we’d be remiss not to mention the world champion in one-liners, sass and being himself.

Rippon is 28 years old, attending his first Olympic Games, a veteran skater about 10 years older than his U.S. men’s figure skating teammates Nathan Chen (18) and Vincent Zhou (17). After all three qualified for the Olympic team, he joked to the Washington Post, “I’m so excited that my two sons are doing so well. I’m honored to be their father.”

Skating to a dance house classic “Let Me Think About It” remix in the short program, Rippon frequently describes his routine as a little trashy and a little fun. (He’s since revised slightly to shoot for “a lot of fun and a little trashy.”) He channels all the queens of RuPaul’s Dragrace, past and future, while he skates. He believes there is no such thing as too much mesh. His butt is the subject of minor conspiracy. If he wasn’t a figure skater, he’d be a hot mess.

While his Twitter and Instagram are both fonts of good #content (more on that momentarily), he’s no less quippy in person. After he winning the men’s title at the U.S. national championships in 2016 — one year after suffering a foot injury — Rippon told NBC, “I’m like a witch! You can’t kill me! I keep coming back every year, and every year I get better!” (Given that the next year, he made the Olympic team, he very well may be right.)

Asked about the U.S. uniforms for the Opening Ceremony, he told GQ he might be picky if it were his fifth Olympics, but as it is, if they had “handed me a piece of rope and some broken sticks and a trash bag, I’d be like, ‘IT’S GORGEOUS. I’LL MAKE IT WORK.'”

Adam Rippon Tweet Hall of Fame

https://twitter.com/Adaripp/status/953333533375737857

Best appearance on someone else’s account

If we may, at this point, be serious, it’s worth commending Rippon’s political outspokenness as well. Vice President Mike Pence led the U.S. delegation to Pyeongchang and Rippon, among other Olympians, expressed his disapproval with the decision. He stated early on that he had no interest in speaking to the on-record homophobe who advocated for gay conversion camps while governor of Indiana. Later, Rippon tweeted that if given the chance to talk after the games, he would bring “people who’s lives have been hurt by legislation he has championed.”

(The 2018 Team USA is notably barrier-breaking in the diversity of Olympians, to the extent that a Fox News editor described the team as “darker, gayer, different,” as if that was a bad development. A number of athletes, including Rippon, represent frustratingly late “firsts” for Team USA: first openly gay Winter Olympians, first black woman on an Olympic speedskating team, first black player on an Olympic hockey team, and so on.)

Anyways, Adam Rippon is a delight.

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Rippon will skate Sunday evening, 8 p.m. ET in the men’s free skate for the figure skating team event. He’ll compete in the individual men’s competition starting Thursday, Feb. 15.