What Would Brian Boitano Do?

Some of us will remember Brian Boitano skating to gold in the 1988 Winter Olympics, triumphing over rival Brian Orser in the famous ‘Battle of the Brians’.

While younger folk may just know him from one of the most iconic moments in animated comedy history, as the superhero star of the hilarious, show-stopping song ‘What Would Brian Boitano Do?’ in the movie ‘South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut’.

His claims to fame do not end there. He’s also a celebrity chef, who starred in his own Food Network show called ‘What Would Brian Boitano Make?’, which cheekily borrowed its title from the ‘South Park’ song. He fronted his own HGTV show, ‘The Brian Boitano Project’, renovating a derelict home in Northern Italy where his ancestors previously lived. And he recently launched ‘Boitano’s Lounge’ at The Kindler hotel in Lincoln, Nebraska, and is now expanding that restaurant and bar concept to more venues around the country.

He was also part of the delegation President Barack Obama sent to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia, coming out as gay days after it was announced by The White House he’d be representing his country again, this time to make a stand against President Vladimir Putin’s anti-gay laws.

Throughout his life after Olympic gold, Brian has applied the skills and mentality that took him to the very top of his sport to continue to shine, and here he shares that experience and wisdom to reveal, well, what Brian Boitano does.

What was it like for your to move on from your competitive career that brought such success and happiness, and to figure out what you wanted to do next?

I was lucky because at the time in America, in the late 80s and through the 90s, figure skating was like rock and roll. So when I ended my amateur career, I started my professional career. No other sport has a life after the Olympics like figure skating does. We went onto touring and doing TV specials, because it’s both sport and entertainment.

But a lot of my friends who were in the Olympics and won medals were like, ‘Now what do I do?’ And I know that they struggled, and they always wished they could continue doing what they were passionate about as work.

So we were lucky in that respect, but it still is hard when you stop, no matter what you do at an elite level. When it starts to go, or you quit, it’s an adjustment. Everything around you changes. Especially when you rely on the reaction of your body, and that starts breaking down, you really come to terms with your mortality. It makes you feel like your brain is still competitive, but your body doesn’t react to what your brain tells it.

You still skate and do your TV specials, but are you feeling the aches and pains more now? And how has your exercise regimen changed over the years?

There were various benchmarks in my life and career where I noticed my body changing. Your body changes a little bit when you’re 30, and then again at 36. And then when you get to 50, there’s a big step down. That’s when you have to start doing less impact things, and maintaining with pilates and things like that. I think it’s a constant search for everybody. My friends who have regular jobs and have to work eight hours a day, I don’t know how they manage it.

I used to skate six hours a day and now it’s about an hour, two days a week. So I try to diversify more now, and biking is much friendlier to my knees. And that’s when I get in my zone and get kind of euphoric, I can push it hard with no repercussions, and not having to worry about how things are hurting. There are very few things like that. I am struggling with my knees, they are getting tired. I even stopped doing yoga classes, because I was sitting out of half of the moves.

And when I’m skating, I try to do less jumping and impacting, and more spinning and focusing on the more aerobic side of it. But I can’t think of a better allover workout than figure skating, it just does everything, so I keep wanting to do it.

When I was eight years old, I saw my first glamorous ice show and I knew it was a calling. I thought, ‘This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.’ So I’m now trying to stay healthy enough to do it for the rest of my life.

How has your mindset as an Olympic athlete helped you in some of your other pursuits outside of sports? And can that experience help others?

I was never the athlete that would go in the direction that the other people went. I always had my own mind and I wanted to do things differently, and I think that that’s helped me going into other businesses.

I got my Food Network show, and then consequently HGTV saw the show and I did something with them. So I got into this lifestyle area, and it’s part of the fabric of my life now and has become pretty much my focus. When things present themselves to me that are different and outside of the box, I run with it.

I do keynote speeches that talk about pivoting from one job to the next using the tools that I’ve learned from sports to help you set goals and accomplish them. In business and in life, my anchor has been something I refer to as my toolbox, which is filled with the tools or skills that I developed in skating. These tools have carried me through my various career changes as I have pivoted from skating to food and lifestyle shows to opening bars and lounges. Some of the tools in my toolbox are passion, work ethic, toughness, resilience, pursuit of excellence and bringing energy to the moment.

From working with kids at my inner-city youth skate program, I discovered that the thing that athletes have that many other people need to figure out is that you can’t go from A to Z right away. Kids will come in, and they can barely stand up on the ice, and they’re like, “I want to spin!” I think it might be because they’re used to all this satisfaction on demand in this new day and age. So I say, “Well, in order to spin, you have to do things in order. And the next thing you have to learn is to put your feet together…”

I think that’s the secret to being a champion, knowing the stepping stones in front of you to reach the next goal. Athletes are forced to learn that or they won’t be champions. You don’t just say, “I’m going to jump in the pool and reach the wall before everybody else.” You say, “I need to learn my stroke better first, and I need to learn my kick, and I need to learn how to jump off the starting gate faster, and learn how my toes curl over the edge of the starting gate.”

So as a restauranteur, it’s not just, “I want to make great food and cocktails.” To do that, I first ask, “Who’s my audience and what do they like?” Not just what I like and I want them to taste. And after I find out what they want, I choose ingredients they would like. From there, you create recipes they would like and then you test those out on people. Then you put it together on the menu, and then you take your staff and you teach them how to do it. So it’s literally stepping stones like that.

Do you think it’s important that somebody who has had that sort of status and adulation has good humor and humility with it? You certainly took the ‘South Park’ song in good spirits and ran with it!

I think I surprised people with my humor after my amateur career, because I was so serious about skating and was always very stoic and nervous in competition situations.

The ‘South Park’ thing started as a little videotape, called ‘The Spirit of Christmas’, that the creators of the show made before they were famous. George Clooney got hold of it and thought it was funny, and passed around to all his studio friends. And so it started doing the rounds and I started hearing about it. And I’m like, “Oh well, whatever, I don’t care!”

And then one of my executive friends at Disney said, “Hey, there’s a movie coming out now. And there’s a song about you.” And I was like, “Oh, s***!” Because I knew they hadn’t always been super-kind to people! But when I saw it, I was pleasantly surprised. At the beginning, I was very nervous and I didn’t try to incorporate it into my life, because I thought it would go away. But it just got bigger and bigger until everybody knew about it. So after it didn’t go away, I decided to incorporate it into my life.

Depending on the generation, it’s the first question out of their mouth. They’re like, “Oh, yeah, you’re an ice skater. But what about ‘South Park’!” I mean, they don’t even remember me from skating. They remember me from ‘South Park’!

You decided to keep your sexuality private during your time as an athlete, and then came out publicly after President Barack Obama asked you to be part of the 2014 Winter Olympics delegation in Russia. How did you feel about that now?

It’s interesting. People always say, “You must feel relieved.” But I don’t feel that. I just felt it was an aspect of my life that I saved for people that I was close to and that knew me well. I never hid it from them and I was never ashamed of it. But when President Obama asked me to be on the delegation, and the message of the delegation was that of tolerance and diversity, and going directly against Putin’s anti-gay propaganda law, I was like, “Okay, I can’t not speak up. I have to go public with this so that I can be on this delegation and truly support it.” And I couldn’t do that if I didn’t make that announcement. I never thought that I would make an announcement of coming out, but it was important to go out in public and say, “I’m not ashamed of this. I’m not hiding it.”

So I did come out, and I’m fine with it. Like I said, I never had any problem before, because everybody that was close to me knew. I just didn’t want it to be the first subject matter when I went on the ‘Today’ show or ‘Good Morning America’. I wanted people to watch my TV shows and to talk about that, not spend my time talking about being a gay man because it was just one aspect of who I was.

My agent, when I stopped competing in the Olympics, said, “I don’t know if you’re gay, or if you’re not gay, but you need to go out and talk about getting married.” The people who bought tickets to my tours and watched my shows were women. They were our market. Sometimes you make decisions based on your business. And, you know, I do understand people doing that.

What other areas of activism are you involved in and what missions are close to your heart?

I do lots of charity work, but in terms of skating, we have the Brian Boitano Youth Skate where we introduce skating to inner-city youth to give them an option to stay off the streets. And to do physical activity, because kids aren’t doing as much these days. The good thing about ice skating is that you can’t do it with a cell phone in your hand.

As you mentioned, figure skating was huge in the 1990s, but it’s not really in that place anymore. What do you think about the future of the sport, and ensuring it is open to a wider group of people?

They [US Figure Skating governing body] have been scouring everybody’s opinions and minds about why finger skating isn’t what it was. They don’t understand it, and we don’t understand it. We don’t know if it’s the personalities or the judging system that’s not as interesting. Nobody knows. They’re dying to get figure skating back up to where it was. In 1995 and 1996, we were the second viewership sport to the NFL, ahead of baseball and basketball. The Tonya [Harding] and Nancy [Kerrigan] thing took us to another level, because it opened us up to a whole other audience.

There’s a lot of pushing for diversity happening in skating now. And I think it’s fantastic because we lose so much talent from people who aren’t interested in it because they don’t know enough about it, or they can’t afford it. So getting everybody involved is gonna open it up to so much more talent out there.