Olympian Johnny Weir has said that his
sexuality kept him at arm's length from the skating community.
On Monday's Dancing with the Stars,
Weir, who is competing with partner Britt Stewart, said that he was
told at 16 that he could not be gay in figure skating.
"I had just turned 16 and I was
competing internationally at the Olympic level," Weir said. "An
agent approached me with my mom and said the world is your oyster and
we’re the agency that can take you where you want to be. But he
then looked at me and my mom and he said if you work with us and we
create this future for you, you can't be gay. And at 16 standing with
your mother that isn’t necessarily a topic that you want to
address."
"My sexuality was not something
that I'd really voiced because you're afraid of how something that is
just inside you will affect other people and you can’t fix that.
You can't change that.”
"I was mortified and I remember
going up to our room and my mom just said, we don’t need them,"
he continued. "You're just going to skate really well, you're
gonna book the jobs by yourself. I used all of that negativity to my
advantage and became a national champion."
He told host Tyra Banks that he “never
felt accepted into the community that I was trying desperately to be
a part of.”
Weir, 36, added in a tweet that he
never came out “because I didn't imagine it as a great secret and
it had nothing to do with my skating or my dreams.”
While Weir had suggested that he's gay
before the publication of his 2010 memoir Welcome to my World,
he started talking about his personal life with the release of his
book.