Is Olympian Gus Kenworthy ready to trade his skis for dancing shoes? Us Weekly sat down with the Team USA athlete and discovered he’d definitely be game for a stint on Dancing With the Stars.
“I would love to,” Kenworthy told Us. “I had been lobbying to try and be on it … last year and really wanted to be, and then it didn’t work out, but I was told that there was interest on their end. So I was definitely hoping that maybe after this Olympics, it’d be a possibility.”
The ABC competition series has been a favorite of Olympians over the years, with five — Apolo Anton Ohno, Kristi Yamaguchi, Shawn Johnson, Meryl Davis and Laurie Hernandez — taking home the coveted mirror ball trophy over the course of 25 seasons.
Don’t be too quick to put all your money on Kenworthy, though. “I really can’t dance, but for me, those are my favorite people to watch on the show,” the 26-year-old freestyle skier said. “Like, the Steve-Os and the people that have no previous experience. And I feel like when it’s like one of the Pussycat Dolls, I’m like, ‘But like, aren’t you already a professional dancer?’”
Us also talked to Olympic ice dancers Maia and Alex Shibutani (a.k.a. the Shib Sibs) about the possibility of competing on DWTS. Though they disagreed about who would come out on top, the brother-sister duo would be open to the opportunity. “I think it would be fun, because we’ve been working so long on something together, where I guess we can be competitive and he thinks he’s got it, but I think I got it,” Maia told Us.
Alex added, “The thing that’s interesting about that is that we are really good at skating together. We’ve never had other skating partners, and so it would be a real challenge, I think, to work with someone else because we do have short of this shorthand communication that we’ve developed just because we know each other so well. And also, just like dancing on the floor is different from what we do on the ice, so there would be a lot to learn. I think it would be a really cool experience.”
