Gus Kenworthy believes that, at age 30, he would be too old to go for a third Olympics in 2022, according to Variety.
“I think I would be too old for it,” the freestyle skier said when asked if he will compete at the Beijing Winter Games, according to the magazine. “I was one of the older guys at this Olympics. There’s still a career that exists around skiing that doesn’t necessarily revolve around the Olympics.”
By 2022, Kenworthy will be two years older than any male slopestyle skier from the event’s first two Olympics in Sochi and PyeongChang.
Kenworthy finished 12th in the 12-man final in PyeongChang, four years after taking silver as part of a U.S. podium sweep in Sochi.
He wasn’t 100 percent in South Korea, competing with a broken thumb and after having six vials of blood drained from a hematoma on his hip.
Kenworthy said in post-Olympic interviews that he planned to continue competing in the short term but was unsure of 2022.
“I feel like I’m at a sort of weird crossroads in my life,” Kenworthy told Variety, adding that he’s had camera tests for hosting jobs and auditions that didn’t work out. “I kind of had planned to be done competing at this last Olympics. And then I got hurt in practice. I didn’t ski the way that I wanted to. They say you’re only as good as your last performance. My last performance was not what I had hoped for. It’s made it really hard to walk away. I haven’t been on the snow since then, but as the season is coming up again, I’m starting to think: ‘Am I doing this again?’ I think I am. I’m still going to compete next winter, probably scaled back from what I normally do.”
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