Freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy switched his national representation from Great Britain back to the U.S.
Kenworthy, 34, won a silver medal in ski slopestyle’s Olympic debut in 2014 as part of a U.S. podium sweep with gold medalist Joss Christensen and bronze medalist Nick Goepper.
After coming out in 2015, he placed 12th at the 2018 PyeongChang Games.
He then switched representation to Great Britain. Kenworthy, who was born in England and moved to the U.S. at age 2, wanted to honor his British mom, and also cited an easier qualification path to the Olympics for Britain rather than through a deeper U.S. field of skiers.
Kenworthy placed eighth in the halfpipe at the 2022 Beijing Games in what he said at the time would be his last competition.
In May 2025, Kenworthy unretired to bid for a fourth Olympics at the 2026 Milan Cortina Games. He made it and placed sixth in the halfpipe.
“I only gave myself nine months to train after taking years off,” Kenworthy said, according to ESPN.com, which first reported Kenworthy’s move back to the U.S. “And I wasn’t too far out of the mix. I thought, ‘I’m healthy and skiing well, so why would I stop?’”
U.S. Ski and Snowboard confirmed that Kenworthy is eligible for international competition this season.
Coinciding with approving Kenworthy’s switch back to the U.S., the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) is amending a rule created in 2025 that prohibits athletes from changing nationalities multiple times, according to ESPN.
The update to the rule: athletes may be allowed “to return to their original country after a period of at least four years,” according to the report.
