Olympian Andrew Blaser Spent Years Living a Double Life. Now He’s Thriving.
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U.S. skeleton athlete Andrew Blaser hated his sport for years, but he valued how the two minutes he spent sliding head-first down his ice track allowed him to escape the double life he led: one as an aspiring Olympian and one as a man who couldn’t verbally admit he was gay.
“I’m always balancing,” Blaser told The Daily Beast over Zoom from the Olympic Village in Yanqing, China.
Blaser, 32, was the sole member of the U.S male skeleton team at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, where he finished 21st in the men’s singles competition. The journey to Beijing—complete with a rainbow-strapped sled—marked the culmination of eight years of professional ambition and personal acceptance, both with the sport and himself.