Whatever Happened To USA Figure Skating Star Johnny Weir?
American figure skater Jonny Weir is a two-time Olympian, placing sixth in the men's singles event at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games and fifth at the 2006 event in Turin. Over a 16-year skating career, he won three consecutive U.S. titles between 2004 and 2006 and six U.S. Championship medals. Weir also earned a bronze at the 2008 World Championships (via NBC Sports).
He was born in 1984 in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, and started skating when he was 11 years old. Within a week of first putting on a pair of skates, he was successfully performing an axel jump on patchy ice in the backyard of his family's home in Quarryville. Just five years later, in 2001, Weir won the World Junior Championships. He described himself as a shy kid who struggled to fit in. "I was the awkward, skinny, smart, driven kid," he once said (via Biography). "I was an honor roll student. I spoke fluent French. I was a bit antisocial. I can't say that I had a really booming social life."
Johnny Weir hosts NBC figure skating analysis
Johnny Weir proved himself a star at the 2006 winter games in Italy, and was the center of media attention at the event. Weir was widely considered figure skating's most outspoken and controversial athlete, getting into a verbal sparring match with a fellow Olympic skater and upsetting anti-fur activists at the 2010 games when he publicly announced that he wanted to use real fur in his skating costume (per Biography).
His personality served him well off the ice, when in 2014 he and 1998 Olympic women's figure skating gold medalist Tara Lipinski began providing commentary and analysis at the Sochi Olympics for NBC Sports. They were so popular that NBC offered them a permanent spot covering figure skating events for the network. Weir has also appeared in a reality TV show and has done other media projects. In 2020, Weir was inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame (via Biography).