'Dancing With the Stars' Winner Adam Rippon Opens up About New YouTube Channel, Post-Olympics Life

Last year had one crazy moment after the other for ice skater Adam Rippon, and things are not slowing down for him in 2019. The Dancing With The Stars champion is readying to launch a YouTube channel and walk through any door that opens up.

The YouTube channel will be created with the production company Portal A, and will feature some "really cool videos," Rippon teased in an interview with PopCulture.com.

"I think we'll hopefully be launching the channel in the next month or two," Rippon said. "So, it should be a lot of fun and I'm hoping to do a lot of really fun videos that hopefully everybody will like to watch."

Rippon said he hopes to create videos that teach people how to skate and show just how fun being on the ice can be.

"One thing that I've been thinking of doing is bringing a few people and teaching them how to skate for maybe like an hour or so," Rippon said. "I think, obviously, that just it won't be an hour, but it'd be fun to bring a few people out onto the ice and just see how it goes."

This year, Rippon also became a spokesman for Vicks Dayquil and Nyquil, which recently launched their new VapoCool products.

"When I was a competitive athlete, I had to be really careful about the different things I would take, when I was competing cause I would get drug tested all the time," Rippon said when asked about the partnership. "I needed to make sure I was taking something that would be cleared, that I knew would work really well and really quickly and something that I knew that was really reliable, so Dayquil and Nyquil were always that for me. When I had the chance to work with them, I was super excited, because it's something that I've used before."

In 2018, Rippon won his first Olympic medal during the Winter Games in South Korea, becoming the first openly gay U.S. athlete to medal at the Olympics. He then went on to compete on DWTS, judge Dancing With The Stars: Juniors and has been an outspoken advocate. But the biggest decision he had to make was moving on from skating competitively. Surprisingly though, it was not the hardest decision to make.

"It wasn't hard, not because I don't love it, but because it's really f– hard," Rippon said.

For those who do not follow ice skating, it feels like Rippon suddenly burst onto the scene in 2018, but nothing could be further from the truth. At 28, he was one of the older members of Team USA, and many of his colleagues were in their late teens. During his final skate at the Olympics, he came to terms with leaving the sport behind.

"I'm in a different place than they are and this is going to be the last time I do this," Rippon recalled thinking. "I remember thinking that and I remember landing the last jump in my competition and being, 'I did it, I can move on.' I know not a lot of athletes aren't that lucky as I was to go out on their own terms, but I was, and I'm so grateful."

Rippon also helped kick off the recent trend of men wearing harnesses on the red carpet after he wore one at the 2018 Oscars. Timothee Chalamet wore one ot the Golden Globes this year, and Michael B. Jordan did the same at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

"I thought that they all looked really cool, and I think that, you know what, it's great for men's fashion that, people are willing to take more risks," Rippon said. "I think that it inspires all these young boys coming up, and people my age and older to just really take more risks, because life is boring if you don't risk a little bit."

Photo credit: Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images for The Points Guy