Skip to main content

Home Culture Culture Film & TV

Adam Rippon goes public with new boyfriend

We need to take a minute.

By Will Stroude

Sorry boys, Adam Rippon is officially taken.

The US Olympic figure skater has gone public with his romance with Jussi-Pekka Kajaala, a Finnish native who he reportedly met on Tinder several months ago.

28-year-old Adam, who’s been winning hearts around the world since becoming the first openly gay US male athlete to win a Winter Olympic medal in South Korea earlier this year, debuted his hunky new boyfriend on Instagram earlier this week.

Sharing a picture of the pair at Runyon Canyon in Los Angeles on Monday (April 2), Adam quipped: “Good boys Finnish 🇫🇮 first.”

 

Good boys Finnish 🇫🇮 first

A post shared by Adam Rippon (@adaripp) on

The sports star later revealed to  PEOPLE that his relationship with Kajaala was still “fresh”.

Rippon added that the pair had “been talking for the past seven months” and then “started to hang out a little bit more, because we were both really busy.”

He joked: “Now that I’m even busier, I thought it was a better time [for us] to hang out.”

It certainly seems like Adam will have a lot on his plate over the coming months – he’s rumoured to have signed up for latest series of Dancing with the Stars.

According to  Us Weekly, the Pyeonchang bronze medalist will compete alongside legends like former figure skater Tonya Harding in  the first ever all-athletes edition of the ballroom dancing competition.

Competing on the show as an out and proud gay man (and one with a boyfriend cheering from the stands) is a far cry from how Adam imagined his life growing up.

The skater, who came out to friends and family at the age of 22 and to the rest of the world at 25, told Attitude earlier this year that he once thought his sexaluality was a secret he’d have to take to his grave.

“I remember being young and thinking to myself ‘I will never tell anyone that I’m gay’,” he said.

“It’s so sad to repeat this but I remember verbatim saying to myself, ‘Nobody will ever know, I will never tell anyone, I have to live with this for the rest of my life’.”