Four-time Olympic skier Gus Kenworthy, who competed for Great Britain at the past two Winter Games, is returning to Team USA.
The International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) approved the freeskier's application earlier this month to switch countries for a second time. He is the first athlete permitted to do so since FIS updated its rules in 2025 to prohibit athletes from changing national affiliation more than once.
"This was not an exception or an exemption from the rule," FIS ad interim Secretary General Urs Lehmann told ESPN. "Gus' case initiated a thought process and a change in thinking. This is now a rule change that will count for everybody moving forward."
According to an FIS representative, the change will be added to its rulebook after the next council meeting on Oct. 1.
Lehmann said athletes will still be prohibited from switching to a third country to prevent what he described as competitive tourism -- changing national affiliation to ease the path to international competition. Athletes, however, may be permitted to return to their original country after a period of at least four years and after meeting criteria that, he said, will be "even more restrictive than was required to make the initial change."
Kenworthy, who was born in Essex, England, to a British mother and American father and moved with his family to Colorado when he was 2, competed for the U.S. at the 2014 Sochi Olympics in Russia, earning silver in ski slopestyle. He again represented the U.S. in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in 2018, where he was one of the first two openly gay men to compete for Team USA at the Winter Games.
Kenworthy announced he was switching nations to Great Britain in June 2019.
"I wanted to honor my mom," Kenworthy said. "It was also a strategic move as far as qualifying, and it opened up a spot for another athlete on the U.S. team. And I thought it would be my last Olympics."
Kenworthy competed for Team GB in Beijing in 2022 and announced his retirement shortly after. He shifted his focus to acting and advocacy, starring in "American Horror Story: 1984" and fundraising for LGBTQ+ charities and mental health organizations. But as he recovered from more than two decades of injuries and concussions, he began contemplating a return.
Last December, at 34, Kenworthy competed in his first halfpipe event in nearly four years, and in January qualified for his fourth Olympics while self-funding his comeback.
In Milan Cortina, he finished sixth in ski halfpipe and left Italy feeling unsatisfied.
"I only gave myself nine months to train after taking years off," Kenworthy said. "And I wasn't too far out of the mix. I thought, 'I'm healthy and skiing well, so why would I stop?'"
Kenworthy finished the season and met with the British team to discuss his future. He said the team couldn't commit to funding and "there was a lot of uncertainty," but officials told him they would grant him a release if he wanted to return to Team USA.
"Gus has been a model professional. His standing in park and pipe skiing helped elevate the team's standard from day one," a GB Snowsport spokesperson told ESPN. "Gus has never been afraid to celebrate both his British heritage and his American life, and we feel he has earned the opportunity to compete for the nation of his choosing."
Kenworthy eventually met with U.S. Ski & Snowboard Chief of Sport Anouk Patty, who told him the team was open to welcoming him back, but there was another obstacle. In May 2025, FIS adopted a provision to Article 203.5, which governs changes of national affiliation, stating that an athlete may switch nations only once and that "a change back or a second change is not allowed."
"I wasn't trying to cheat the system," Kenworthy said. "I wasn't looking for an easier qualifying process [to the 2030 Games]. I'm returning to my home country where my chance of making another Olympics is so much slimmer."
Patty told ESPN that U.S. Ski & Snowboard submitted the required paperwork to FIS in late April, along with what she described as "an almost legal brief explaining why [Kenworthy] should be granted an exception to the rule and allowed to come back to the U.S."
Their case centered on two points: Kenworthy wasn't seeking to represent a third country, but to return to the U.S., where he had developed as an athlete and won an Olympic medal; and he had switched to Great Britain before FIS adopted the one-change restriction.
Had he known the rule was coming, USSS argued, "he would have thought twice" about leaving Team USA.
Four-and-a-half months after receiving Kenworthy's application, on Sept. 8, FIS sent a letter to USSS granting his request to return to the U.S. team. Lehmann said that while the USSS arguments were "smart and reasonable," what ultimately led FIS to reconsider the rule was Kenworthy's long history with the U.S. program and the distinction between returning to a former nation and switching to a third country for competitive advantage.
"Why not allow an athlete to go back to their original national ski association, which invested a lot in them?" said Lehmann, a former downhill world champion and the longtime president of the Swiss Ski Federation. "I know exactly what it means to be brought to the top by an NSA, and to want to give back something to the country that made you a famous skier."
After receiving the letter, Patty called Kenworthy, who was home in New York City, to share the news. Not long after, he received a FaceTime call from U.S. Olympian Hunter Hess, who was training in New Zealand with the U.S. freeski team.
"It means a lot that they support me coming back," Kenworthy said. "I want to be a mentor and there is a really good vibe on the team. It's a more legitimate program now in a lot of ways, and it feels more inclusive."
He will join the team at a training camp in Austria in November.