Good sport

This out athlete made Olympic history 3 times; now he has a big announcement

It’s smart to walk away from the table when you’re up in chips. One Olympic gold and one Olympic bronze certainly sounds like “up” to us.

Still, it’s bittersweet that Eric Radford, the first openly gay man to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics, is hanging up his skates for good after the 2018 Games.

The handsome 33-year-old Canadian won gold in team figure skating with his partner Meagan Duhamel, and the two went on to win the bronze in free skating.

That meant he also became the first openly gay man to win multiple Olympic medals.

And as if that wasn’t enough Olympic history made, the skating duo also became the first to successfully land a throw quad salchow at an Olympic event.

That incredibly challenging component came while they skated to Adele’s “Hometown Glory,” and the crowd… went… wild.

“He nearly tossed her to the roof of the arena on a quad twist,” Dan Barnes wrote in Canada’s National Post, “and almost over the boards on a throw triple Salchow.”

“We don’t ever have to do a quad throw again,” Duhamel said. “We landed the last quad we tried. That makes me happy.”

“We saved the best for last,” Radford added.

“It’s the sweetest [ending] it could possibly be right now,” Radford said. “I don’t think that there’s any better way.”

Here’s a look back at Radford’s 2018 Olympic experience:

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