Out athletes Adam Rippon and Megan
Rapinoe are among the 16 athletes to appear in ESPN The Magazine's
annual Body Issue.
Rippon, who recently made history as
the first openly gay person to win Dancing With The Stars,
said that he couldn't have done a nude photoshoot if he was in the
closet.
“I couldn't have done this [shoot]
while I was in the closet,” Rippon told ESPN, according to PEOPLE.
“I think that, with my experience of coming out [in 2015], I felt
so liberated in so many ways.”
Rippon, a figure skater who medaled at
the 2018 Winter Olympics, described the photos as “a milestone”
of all the work he's done “to get to the point to be an Olympic
medal-winning figure skater.”
“I don’t want to say I’ll never
be in this shape again, but I’ll never be in this shape,” he
said. “I’ll be in another shape. ... I don’t think figure
skaters get the credit we deserve, but at the same time, that’s our
job. The whole point is that it looks really easy.”
Seattle Reign forward Megan Rapinoe,
who came out publicly in 2012, appeared in ESPN's 2014 issue. She
recently made headlines with the announcement that she's dating
two-time WNBA champion Sue Bird.
ESPN The Magazine's Body Issue
arrives on newsstands June 29.