Gay Olympic hero Adam Rippon celebrates his 30th with a breathtaking birthday skate to ‘River’ by Ben Platt

Nov 12 2019
Written by Josh Milton

Olympian Adam Rippon spent his 30th birthday gracefully gliding across an ice rink. (Screen capture via YouTube)

Some people celebrate their 30th birthday with a cake and existentialist dread, others, like gay figure skater Adam Rippon, do a “birthday joy skate”.

The awe-inspiring routine was done to Ben Platt’s cover of the Joni Mitchell Song, ‘River’.

In a touching Instagram post, the Olympic medallist described how “grateful” he is for his life.

One that has been embellished with breakthrough victories in an array of tournaments and garnering legions of fans.

Adam Rippon: ‘I wanted to do something fun for myself’.

View this post on Instagram

Today is my 30th birthday. I couldn’t be more grateful for everything and everyone in my life. Thank you for always sending love and positive energy my way. I hope I’m always able to do the same for you. I wanted to do something fun for myself so I asked one of my old skating choreographers, Cindy Stuart, to put this together with me. She is amazing. And Ben Platt is also amazing (duh) and when I heard him do a cover of this song I knew I had to skate to it. Huge thank you to @oniceperspectives who put this all together too ❤️ HBD 2 ME. I LOVE YOU ?

A post shared by Adam Rippon (@adaripp) on Nov 11, 2019 at 9:04am PST

Rippon marked his 30th spin around the solar system by gliding grafefully across the rink.

Explaining why he chose to celebrate in this way, he said: “Today is my 30th birthday.

“I couldn’t be more grateful for everything and everyone in my life. Thank you for always sending love and positive energy my way.

“I hope I’m always able to do the same for you.

US Olympic figure skating gold medalist Adam Rippon speaks at a rally calling on Sen. Jeff Flake to reject Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court on October 1, 2018 (Scott Eisen/Getty)

“I wanted to do something fun for myself so I asked one of my old skating choreographers, Cindy Stuart, to put this together with me. She is amazing.

“And Ben Platt is also amazing (duh) and when I heard him do a cover of this song I knew I had to skate to it.

“Huge thank you to On Ice Perspectives who put this all together.”

Seems that Platt himself gave his seal of approval to the performance, after he tweeted: “Dreams on dreams.”

Rippon himself has since hung up his skates and retried from the sport.

You can watch the full performance below:

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