What happened to ‘Jeopardy!’ contestant Joe Velasco?

For all the guff it gets, figure skating is — at its most basic level — borderline bloodsport. It’s the practice of seeing how fast you can move on a rock-hard, frictionless surface while jumping in the air and spinning around, all with a pair of knives strapped to your feet. Oh also, don’t forget to smile. 

For more on this, we turn to Joe Velasco, the Jeopardy! contestant who won the hearts of America this week after returning for the show’s Wildcard Tournament. Having already established himself as a winner during his 2020 debut on the show, Velasco had nothing to prove – although, incidentally, he did walk away with the top prize for a second time. Where the California native really found an audience, however, was during the segment of the show where he was interviewed by Ken Jennings.

“Your original show was the anniversary of something that happened to you. What was it?” Jennings asked, prompting Velasco to recall that his premiere episode marked the “17-year anniversary to the day of a horrible figure skating accident that I had.” 

Joe Velasco’s gnarly accident

A little digging will show that the former figure skater has talked about his accident at some length on social media. According to an Instagram post that he made after his first Jeopardy! appearance, Velasco flubbed a complex jump in spectacular fashion. “(…) my left leg whipped around behind me and the left blade came to a stop IN THE BONE OF MY RIGHT WRIST,” he wrote of the incident. “I severed arteries, nerves, and almost every tendon. I nearly bled out on the ice.” Or, to put it in the form of a question, “What are you going to be having nightmares about tonight?”

Six hours of surgery later, Velasco was bloodied but unbeaten. As he told Jennings on Tuesday, he went on to “work with an organization that now provides support for Black and Brown figure skaters.”