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.
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Blaser was born on May 8, 1989 in Boise, Idaho, the youngest of four in a sports-driven Mormon family. His competitive spirit started early, with stints in basketball, football, track, and bobsledding throughout high school, the University of Idaho, and his post-graduate life. His goal was always to get to the Olympics, his mother Ellen Blaser said.
“We used to tease him about it. ‘Okay, Andy, you go for it,’ and not really taking him too seriously right at first,” Ellen told The Daily Beast. “It became very, very clear, fairly quickly that he really was going to dedicate himself to that, so then we all just got behind him.”
He eventually picked skeleton as his medium, a sliding sport where athletes glide headfirst down an ice track at speeds of up to about 80 mph. Blaser initially despised the sport: the preparation to get into a successful mental headspace for it was intense and inconsistent, and he didn’t like not being fully in control. He said he’s earned the reputation of quitting more times than anyone; he jokingly has a standing offer out to sell all of his equipment.
But the high Blaser got as he slid down the track—a “flow state,” he said— was unmatched, particularly as he battled some of his own inner demons, such as his expressing his sexuality.
“Skeleton allowed me that freedom for two minutes a day, those became the most valuable two minutes a day for me to get me through some stuff,” Blaser said, “to help me get to a place that I was OK not being OK.”
Blaser came out to his family roughly seven years ago, a decision he said he had to convince himself was the right thing to do. He had been comfortable around his friends and colleagues, spending his high school lunches with the theater kids instead of the athletes he competed with (and dealing with the homophonic taunts that came with it, which he said helped fuel his competitive drive).
But the decision to be himself around his family was harder than the national championships he had competed in.
“I kind of operated like a Doomsday prepper,” Blaser said. “I was convinced that my family was gonna hate me when I was initially dealing with it, and then I got really good at kind of protecting myself from that situation that I was so afraid of.”
His family didn’t hate him, but the reaction also wasn’t overwhelming acceptance. His older sister Lindsay Blaser, with whom Blaser has an exceptionally close relationship, said she viewed the experience through the lens of a protective older sibling, wanting Blaser to be able to express himself while also avoiding any potential negative reactions.
“I want him to be fully himself and very comfortably himself in everything,” Lindsay, 38, said. “And I think we’ve gotten to that point, but it’s not an easy thing for everyone.”
Acceptance didn’t come easily at first to Ellen Blaser, even though she said she wasn’t surprised when her son came out (“What took you so long?” she said she thought). But she eventually recognized the difficulty of coming out to a religious family, who has grown closer in the years since.
In their shared love of reading and exchanging books, Ellen recommended that Andrew read Dustin Lance Black’s memoir Mama’s Boy: A Story From Our Americas, which recounts Black’s relationship with his mother while growing up as a gay Mormon.
Andrew Blaser has used his family’s growing comfort with his sexuality to let his self-expression flourish. Throughout his competitive seasons, which typically last half a year, Blaser has worn a snakeskin tracksuit with a matching pod on his sled. He’s painted his nails, which helped partially stop his nail-biting habit. He said when he returns from the Olympics next week, he plans on making an even “louder” suit.
Even in China, which has had a history of censorship against LGBTQ people and where same-sex marriage is illegal, Blaser managed to keep his rainbow-colored tape on his sled’s handlebars while he competed, the reaction to which he said was heartwarming. Some praised Blaser for modeling what a gay athlete could achieve, while others thanked him for inspiring family members who wrestled with coming out.
“It just felt right to put rainbow tape on and have a little bit more of, like, kind of expression of myself, my personality, and things that make me me, and to have that mean something to other people was unexpected,” he said.
Blaser’s relationship with skeleton is still complicated. He’s grown more in love with the sport, the relationships he’s built through it, and the places he’s managed to see. However, he still hasn’t unlocked a consistent state of “flow,” gets frustrated by the outcomes of competitions (he missed the skeleton final due to his 21st-place finish), and said the sport’s financial costs can be detrimental. “I don’t make money sliding skeleton,” he said.
But Blaser, who works at a Starbucks when he isn’t in season, still plans to compete. He attributed his frustration to a childhood tendency to want to quit school after a failed test—and a realization that, after such a hardship, you should push forward.
“So here we are,” Blaser said. “Eventually, if you just hold on long enough, you make it to the Olympics.”
