{"id":3550,"date":"2018-01-22T04:15:22","date_gmt":"2018-01-22T12:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=3550"},"modified":"2018-01-22T04:15:22","modified_gmt":"2018-01-22T12:15:22","slug":"olympians-on-thin-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2018\/01\/22\/olympians-on-thin-ice\/","title":{"rendered":"Olympians On Thin Ice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some real talent is preparing to head to South Korea for the&nbsp;<em>Winter Olympics<\/em>.&nbsp; Openly gay skater&nbsp;<strong>Adam Rippon&nbsp;<\/strong>was not pleased when he learned that the head of the US delegation would be the Vice President.&nbsp; \u201cYou mean&nbsp;<strong>Mike Pence<\/strong>?&nbsp; The same Mike Pence that funded gay conversion therapy?\u201d&nbsp; Rippon made his thoughts on meeting&nbsp;<em>Mr. Waiting in the Wings&nbsp;<\/em>quite clear.&nbsp; \u201cIf it were before my event, I would absolutely not go out of my way to meet somebody who I felt has gone out of their way to not only show that they aren\u2019t a friend of a gay person but that they think that they\u2019re sick.\u201d&nbsp; The Vice President responded to the comment \u2013 via a spokesperson (as all men of character do).&nbsp; \u201c[Rippon\u2019s] accusation is totally false and has no basis in fact.&nbsp; Despite these misinformed claims, the vice president will be enthusiastically supporting all the US athletes competing next month in Pyeongchang.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Needless to say, Rippon will not be the only gay skater at the&nbsp;<em>Olympics<\/em>.&nbsp; But he will have one other \u201copenly gay\u201d skater in the&nbsp;<em>Olympic Village<\/em>.&nbsp; Canadian&nbsp;<strong>Eric Radford&nbsp;<\/strong>has qualified in the pairs competition with his partner,&nbsp;<strong>Meagan Duhamel&nbsp;<\/strong>(no relation, I\u2019m sure).&nbsp; Radford talked about the advantages of being a pairs skater.&nbsp; \u201cA lot of pairs end up dating one another.&nbsp; It can become risky because your on-ice training can be affected by your off-ice relationship.&nbsp; If you have a fight at home, it makes that training difficult.&nbsp; I used to joke around that I\u2019m the ultimate pairs-boy.&nbsp; I never had to worry about developing an off-ice relationship.\u201d&nbsp; Speaking of relationships, Eric has been with his&nbsp;<em>fianc\u00e9&nbsp;<\/em>for four years and they are raising a daughter together.&nbsp; Sounds to me like he\u2019s already a winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some real talent is preparing to head to South Korea for the&nbsp;Winter Olympics.&nbsp; Openly gay skater&nbsp;Adam Rippon&nbsp;was not pleased when he learned that the head of the US delegation would be the Vice President.&nbsp; \u201cYou mean&nbsp;Mike Pence?&nbsp; The same Mike Pence that funded gay conversion therapy?\u201d&nbsp; Rippon made his thoughts on meeting&nbsp;Mr. Waiting in the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3550"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3551,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3550\/revisions\/3551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}