U.S. Olympic freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy, who won a Silver Medal at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia in 2014, has come out as gay on the cover of ESPN. An aggressive competitor, he told the magazine that, after coming in second, he decided to go for the No. 1 ranking among all freestyle skiers for the 2014-2015 season, and then come out. Now he's checked off both those goals.

Kenworthy, who is from Telluride, Colorado, says he knew he was gay since the age of 5 or so. He began skiing competitively in his teen years, and says he first encountered issues on the slopes at the age of 19 when an X Games interviewer asked him whom he was dating. "No, no girlfriend," he replied anxiously, and then promptly lost.

What followed, Kenworthy says, were years of trying to fit in to the macho world of action sports. "In skiing, there's such an alpha male thing about pulling the hottest chicks," Kenworthy tells ESPN. "I know hooking up with hot girls doesn't sound like the worst thing in the world. But I literally would sleep with a girl and then cry about it afterward. I'm like, 'What am I doing? I don't know what I'm doing.'"

During the Olympics, Kenworthy had a boyfriend, though not publicly; the 2014 Games prompted a sustained conversation over the heightened state of homophobia in Putin's Russia. Today, he says one of his hopes is to have a "TV boyfriend" in the future in the same way that his X Games competitors have TV girlfriends who the cameras cut to before and after a run.

In the skiing world, Kenworthy is known for being equally strong at slopestyle, halfpipe, and big air events. Among non-skiing fans, he's often remembered as the athlete who rescued stray dogs in Sochi. Now at the age of 24 and at the top of his sport, he has a lot more competition in front of him, should he remain healthy. He also has significant earning potential: He is currently sponsored by Nike, GoPro, Atomic, and Monster, and makes as much as $1 million a year.