Lance Armstrong Disses Trans Athletes On “Stars On Mars” – And Adam Rippon Speaks Out
The new Fox series Stars On Mars gathers together a group of celebrities in a reality competition-style show to find out who would survive life on a simulated Mars mission. Former Tour de France athlete Lance Armstrong began to denigrate transgender athletes in a recent episode sparking a backlash from his fellow contestants.
Figure skater Adam Rippon has spoken about his feelings towards his cast-mate in an interview with Daily Beast where he calls Armstrong “inappropriate” and the “greatest cheater in American history”.
Equal not separate
Lance Armstrong was once considered one of the greatest American cyclists to compete in the Tour de France. That was before he was found to be doping and stripped of his consecutive Tour de France titles and his Olympic medal. Armstrong has reappeared now on Stars On Mars where he has voiced his opinions about trans people in sports.
“Listen, this is real simple: You want to transition, let’s do it. You have your own category,” he says. “We’re gonna have a whole new division. We’ll celebrate you just like we celebrate everybody else. Let’s go. What’s unfair about that?”
His comments reference an interview he did on a previously recorded podcast. Armstrong was reportedly not prompted by any other cast member to bring the subject up. Singer Tinashe also took a stand against his comments.
“To me, I think we just have to care about if you ‘otherize’ people. It’s not good for their mental health,” she says. “To kind of like exclude them from the same spaces that everyone else is.”
The other cast look visibly uncomfortable during the conversation. Modern Family alum Ariel Winter piped up to say, “You’re ostracising the people that don’t fit in the categories.”
Adam Rippon didn’t immediately respond to the comments in the conversation with Armstrong. He spoke to Ariel Winters aside and said, “Those comments here in this experiment have completely shifted the energy and have completely shifted the focus and I will not ever forget them.”
Rippon has now given an interview where he elaborates on his feelings about Armstrong’s opinion. “Nobody wanted to have this conversation. Especially on this cute little reality show where we all had to live together for weeks on end,” he tells Daily Beast. “I’m not afraid of having difficult conversations, but if we’re going to fully open that particular conversation, I want trans athletes [present], I want people who are doing research into this [to be there], and people who are real proponents of seeing women’s sports succeed. I don’t need to hear what the greatest cheater in American history has to say about what he thinks is an unfair advantage.”
Rippon, Tinashe and Winters have all made their feelings abundantly clear. For Armstrong’s sake, it seems that he had better perform well in the challenges to avoid being up for elimination.
