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With the Winter Olympics beginning this week, I wanted to talk to someone who is well-positioned to move us into the winter sports space—Olympic Ice Dancer Tim Koleto. Tim and his skating partner Misato Komatsubara are the 2022 Olympic Silver Medalists in Ice Dance, and Tim is a five-time Japanese Champion Ice Dancer. It’s been almost a year since Tim announced his retirement from competition, and I wanted to catch up with him to see what it’s been like for him as he has adjusted to life after being a professional athlete.
photo via Tim Koleto
Tim was also kind enough to give me a preview of the figure skating competition for this piece I wrote for Bustle on stories to follow at this year’s Winter Games. “Since 2010, there have been direct rivalries of Canada's Virtue and Moir, USA's Davis and White, and France's Papadakis and Cizeron,” he said about the ice dancing field. “This will be the first Games in 20 years where one of those three teams won't take the title.” Tim says he’ll personally be rooting for the American ice dancing team of Evan Bates and Madison Chock, reigning three-time World Champions (and husband and wife), to take the gold in the individual event at their fourth Olympics together.
As for the women’s competition, there’s plenty of drama to be had there, too. “Kaori Sakamoto, three-time World Champion and the first Japanese woman to qualify for three Olympic Games, will be going for the gold, with USA's Alysa Liu (reigning World Champion) and Amber Glenn (reigning and three-time U.S. Champion) playing spoiler,” Tim said. “It's absolutely anyone's game.” And the figure skating team event will take place without Russian or individual athletes for the first time, which Tim says opens the door for Italy, France, Canada, China, and Georgia to join the U.S. and Japan in the medals conversation.
Since retiring, Tim has settled in Montreal and is pursuing new interests and hobbies (which you’ll hear more about below). He has aspirations of becoming a writer and he loves Lady Gaga. Full disclosure that Tim is a friend of mine, and his family spent the holidays at our home.
Below, we chat about retirement, his status as a bicon, trans inclusion in sport, why same-sex pairs belong in figure skating, and more. You can follow Tim on Instagram or at his new Substack where he will be sharing some of his writing.
Out of Your League: It's been about a year since you announced your retirement from ice dancing. How has transitioning away from being a professional athlete been for you and what has that adjustment been like?
Tim Koleto: When my partner Misato expressed her desire to step away from competitive skating, I spent a period of about 6 months doing very little at all. I made some phone calls and emails going over prospective options for potential new partnerships and considered returning to competition, but ultimately decided that it was best to allow my career to also come to it's natural end. In the early months I found myself drawn to people and friends who were also put in a position where they were forced to finish their competitive lives before they were emotionally ready, oftentimes a retirement triggered by injury, illness, or financial burden.
There's not much that can prepare you for a career pivot after pursuing the same goals for almost 27 years, and it feels particularly brutal when you have very little agency in it. I remember feeling a bit like road kill; not quite dead, but lying there bleeding out in front of everyone all the same. People oscillated between assuming I had already retired or asking me who I would skate with. I remember bumping into an ex-training mate downtown in Montreal months after and the first thing she said was, "You're still here?"
An innocent enough question, but one that stuck with me for a long while.
Still, there is no animosity between Misato and I. It just became clear that no matter how hard we tried, she felt a career satisfaction and a desire to move on that I hadn't quite reached yet. I'm forever grateful to the community of professional skaters, who embraced me and invited me into their world. Because of this I've been able to not only continue performing alongside Misato and others, but to renegotiate my feelings with Figure Skating without all of the challenges and judgements that accompany competition. Had I closed my competitive career on my own terms and my own timing, I'm not sure I would've had the experiences I'm having now.
OOYL: What are you up to now?
TK: I've been performing for over a year and a half now as a pro skater. In between I've spent a fair bit of time coaching and a bit of choreography as well. I hope to move more in that direction in the near future.
I've also been finding ways of integrating play into my life, rather than just pursuing new career goals in a monetary or capitalistic sense. I bought a digital piano and a microphone just to mess around with and try to develop some skills relating to music. I've also been writing since I was very young and have been putting a lot more time and effort into pursuing writing fiction in whatever spare time I can carve out. I hope to share more on that soon.
OOYL: It's been a busy year for the sport of figure skating, and there have been so many conversations about what the future of this sport will look like. In many ways, it's a progressive space that pushes the boundaries in places others don't; but it also exists within a mainstream sports world that isn't a fan of progress.
Several NGBs—Great Britain, Canada, Finland—have allowed for same-sex couples to compete in ice dancing, though the IF hasn't followed suit. What are your thoughts on this development and where you think same-sex pairs should fit into the future of the sport? Are there significant barriers that you see to the acceptance of it on the international level?
TK: Figure Skating is such an outlier among sports. It has always been innovative (and in many ways controversial), while maintaining a certain status quo, particularly in regards to gender and sexuality. As an "aesthetic" sport, there's a lot of pushback internally and externally on what is appropriate or should be allowed. Particularly in my category of Ice Dancing where the rules and general tropes are built directly off the highly-gendered world of Ballroom Dance, things are slower to adapt and become accepting of alternative expressions.
Still, I do think Figure Skating is making big strides. A couple of years ago the International Skating Union introduced rule changes to reverse the steps that were traditionally considered "male" and "female", requiring younger couples to learn what it was like to perform the other partners' steps. It was not required at the Senior level, but I think encouraging younger kids in the discipline about viewing steps or holds as interchangeable rather than gendered is a really successful implementation of balancing things out. I expect it to have a positive ripple effect in the future not only in regards to their respective skills as skaters, but also for the mutual respect and constructive learning it helps invite into the partnership.
I think there is a place for same-sex couples of all combinations on the ice. We've seen it performed in show skating at an extremely high level with Olympic Champions Gabriella Papadakis and Madison Hubbell, which I think helped greatly in the general optics, and for audiences to see that it wasn't really any different. I think it's also important to work towards educating both skaters and audiences that gender is more complex in it's relation to sport and ballroom dance than has been previously presented. The Tango, for example, originated in Buenos Aires and was created primarily with male-male pairings due to a number of economic and sociological factors.
Rule-wise, the verbiage in the official rules already allows for either partner to be the lifter or to be lifted. In Synchronized Skating, which was just recently added into the 2028 Youth Olympics for the first time, there are no gender requirements and all skaters are graded equally. The infrastructure is already there to support teams of two skaters of any gender combination. I hope to see more forms of expression and the love of skating and sport in all different kinds of paradigms in the near future.
OOYL: Recently, Skate Canada pulled out of holding events in Alberta after the province passed a policy banned trans women from competing in women's sports. You spoke publicly in support of this move. What prompted you to make a public statement, and can you say more about why you believe this is the right stand for Skate Canada to be making?
TK: There were several reasons I felt compelled to speak up. Firstly, I have trained in Canada off and on since 2018 and feel a strong connection to the country. I felt proud that Skate Canada would take a stand and support their athletes and the queer community. Second, there has been a push in recent years for other queer identities or groups to scapegoat or leave behind trans people in favor of more "culturally palatable" queer identities. I feel a sense of anger and frustration that some of this ideology and rhetoric has seeped into the queer community, and I wanted to take a firm and public stance on that.
Skate Canada has been at the forefront of gender inclusivity in the skating community for some time in my opinion, including gender-neutral changing rooms, and I wanted to publicly state I support their commitment to creating safe spaces for athletes of all orientations.
OOYL: You recently spoke publicly about your sexuality for really the first time. What has the reaction been like to your comments and how has being more open with yourself and your journey impacted you? (Aka we love a #BIcon!)
TK: I came out publicly in 2023 but I didn't realize how few people had maybe missed that announcement. I have wanted to speak about my queerness and how it intersects with skating and my experiences in elite sport, so having the chance to open up about it and speak more freely was actually really nice. I was more nervous than I expected; having discussed so freely with friends and family about my experiences with queerness, biphobia, conversion therapy, etc. I had almost forgotten what it was like to talk about it for the "first time" in a format like a podcast that has such a wide audience.
I recently watched an interview with fellow bisexual and Heated Rivalry star François Arnaud where he described something I had felt but failed to articulate. I'd like to paraphrase by saying that being a bisexual man in a heterosexual relationship, I often felt there were assumptions both to my straightness and my queerness. Allowing these assumptions to go uncorrected suggested a sense of shame I did not and do not feel about my identity. I was comfortably out to my ex-wife, friends, colleagues, and family but I realized there was one glaring place where I had remained silent. I don't believe all queer people need to come out, but when I realized that I was surrounded by gay men and queer women in Figure Skating, but could not name one out bisexual male in the sport, I decided to post about it and never look back.
OOYL: Where should we look for you next?
TK: I plan on putting a lot more of my thoughts, writing, and small musings on my new Substack. See you there soon.