Timothy LeDuc

Timothy LeDuc is a former US national pair skating champion, Four Continents silver medallist, and World Team Trophy winner. They are also famous for being the first openly gay skater to win the pairs title at the US Championships, and in 2022, they became the first openly non-binary athlete to qualify for the Winter Olympics, having started using they/them pronouns the previous year. They and their long-time skating partner Ashley Cain-Gribble retired from competitive skating after the Olympics. Le Duc now hopes to become a skating coach in Chicago.

LeDuc was born in Iowa in May 1990. They began skating aged 12 and got their first taste of national success when they competed in the men’s novice competition at the 2008 US Championships. That same year, they came out as gay and suffered attempts to “convert” them by their strongly Christian family. LeDuc was strong enough to reject such ideas, and their family have long come to accept and support his identity and sexuality. Their career began to gain traction when they won junior bronze at the 2011 US Championships. They moved up to senior tournaments in 2012.

LeDuc first teamed up with Ashley Cain (now Ashley Cain-Gribble) in 2016. The pair enjoyed their first success when they took silver at the 2018 Four Continents Championship and a senior ISU Championship. After issues caused by Covid and mass bannings due to world politics, LeDuc and Cain-Gribble qualified for the 2022 Winter Olympics, finishing eighth, and the 2022 World Championships, which ended on a downbeat note when Cain-Gribble fell during their routine and had to be helped off the ice by medics. It was an unfortunate end, but LeDuc is now moving on to the next stage of their career.