‘I’m on right side’ – Kenworthy on death threats after ICE post

Team GB’s Gus Kenworthy says he took the death threats he received after he posted a graphic message about the United States’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement organisation with a pinch of salt.

Freestyle skier Kenworthy shared the image – in which ‘ICE’ was preceded by an expletive – on Instagram a week before he was due to compete at the Winter Olympics in Italy.

In January, intensive care nurse Alex Pretti, 37, and fellow Minnesota resident Renee Good, 37, were both killed by ICE agents in the city, sparking protests across the US.

Speaking to BBC Sport about the threats he received, Kenworthy said: “It was tough. No-one wants to read bad things about themselves, things that are threats and violent and scary and homophobic.

“I also took it with a grain of salt. I couldn’t imagine writing something like that about someone, especially on a public forum, anyone who does that has something wrong with them.

Kenworthy, 34, was born in Chelmsford but grew up in the US and won silver in the ski slopestyle at the Sochi 2014 Games, before switching allegiance to Team GB in 2019.

He retired after the 2022 Olympics in Beijing but announced his comeback last year, though has had to self-fund his way to the Games given GB Snowsport’s athlete funding had already been allocated.

He qualified in ninth place for tonight’s halfpipe final, which starts at 18:30 GMT, with a score of 81.25 points.

“I called it quits partly because I’d been doing it a long time and I had burnout and was over it, but I was also having some bad head injuries and so it made it easier to walk away,” said the five-time World Championship medallist.

“Months after, when those symptoms started to subside and I started to feel myself again, I started wondering it wasn’t the way I wanted it to finish.

“I kept pushing that feeling away, and finally I was at a point where I was like ‘ok, well if you’re having that feeling, it’s now or never, and I didn’t want to live to regret it and wonder what if.

“I decided to just give it a push and make it go, and try and get there. It’s been pretty tough, because I didn’t have any funding, I wasn’t on any national team in order to get assistance, so it’s been totally self-funded, myself, my coach, both of our travel, training camps, lift tickets, insurance, all of it, food, lodgings.