'Stars on Mars' winner Adam Rippon says costar Lance Armstrong made him 'wildly uncomfortable' during fight over trans athletes: 'He couldn't let it go.'
jumped in to counter his argument that trans athletes should be put into a separate division. On the episode, Rippon stays out of the fray, only calling it "disheartening" to Winter afterward. But he tells EW that was not where things ended in reality.| Credit: Fox
"What happens next is Lance comes over and we have a conversation, me and him, for probably the next 15 or 20 minutes. It just wouldn't end," Rippon says. "Every time I'm saying something, I'm lilting, like it's over, let's just stop. He couldn't let it go. And it made me wildly uncomfortable." He says he felt pressure to speak up as a queer athlete. "I wanted to be a representation of the LGBTQ+ community and that was a moment where I wanted to say something, but I don't know everything about being a trans person," Rippon shares. "I do know that a lot of the things that were said that were not on the show were very transphobic and I'm glad that trans people didn't need to watch what was said. It was not nice and it was not good in any sort of way.
Rippon calls trans issues a "hot topic" and says trans athletes involvement in sports is an important discussion to have, but that Armstrong's argument that there isn't enough research about it is counterintuitive. "I think in sports, obviously there's a conversation to be had that is totally legitimate, but if you want the research, if you want the studies, [trans athletes] have to be allowed in these spaces," he says.
"It just made total sense because he couldn't let it go when it was happening," Rippon says. "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,' [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.
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