Lance Armstrong's trans athlete comments on Star On Mars continued behind the scenes, says Adam Rippon
Lance Armstrong's comments on trans athletes were apparently even lengthier and more transphobic than we saw
Stars On Mars has crowned a winner, but according to him, the whole experience was soured by one bad actor. Olympic athlete Adam Rippon may have achieved a gold medal in pretending to be on a Mars mission, but he was “disheartened” after having to sit through Lance Armstrong’s political opinions. “That’s when everything changed, when Lance brought up his opinions on trans athletes and sports,” Rippon tells Entertainment Weekly in a new interview. “It changed my experience totally. It was not the same after that.”
In fact, Rippon thinks it may have influenced some of the show’s many quitters: “I think when people could hear this conversation that Lance started, I think some people were like, ‘I’m getting out of here, this is not the right place, not the right time.’” According to the figure skater, the conversation went on even longer than what aired on television. Armstrong confronted him directly about it for another 15 to 20 minutes, and wouldn’t listen when Rippon tried to bring the conversation to an end. “He couldn’t let it go. And it made me wildly uncomfortable.”
The actual issue of transgender discrimination in sports is one that trans people should be a part of, says Rippon—as opposed to having a random group of famous cisgender people discussing it in a fake space habitat. “Everybody was like, ‘Stop talking, please stop talking about this. Let’s just focus on the mission. We’re just filming a show here about pretending to be on Mars, just focus on that,’” Rippon recalls, “[but] he couldn’t let it go and nobody wanted to let him have the last word…. He was obsessed with not being able to get the last word.”
Rippon is grateful some of Armstrong’s more transphobic comments never made it to air. And as for the cyclist himself, well, “The person talking about this is the most recognized cheater in all of sports. So it’s just not the right time, it’s not the right person. Just focus on what [host] William Shatner has to say and just get your job done.”