Olympic Athletes Who Look Nothing Like They Used To
Wait...an Olympic champion ended up on The Biggest Loser? At their peak fitness, billions watch Olympic athletes compete, but afterward, their lives go on. You'll never guess how much some of these athletes have changed.
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00:00Wait, an Olympic champion ended up on The Biggest Loser? At their peak fitness, billions
00:05watch Olympic athletes compete, but afterward, their lives go on. You'll never guess how
00:09much some of these athletes have changed.
00:12As of 2024, women's artistic gymnastics has truly captivated the world, and the U.S. team
00:17has been especially indomitable. However, there was once a 16-year gap in gold medal
00:21wins for the U.S. team following the 1996 successes of the women's gymnastics team now
00:26known as the Magnificent Seven. That changed in 2012 with the Fierce Five, with U.S. gymnasts
00:31Gabby Douglas, Jordan Weber, Mikayla Maroney, Allie Raisman, and Kyla Ross together winning
00:36gold for their nation.
00:37But in the meme-filled internets, Maroney unexpectedly became something of a breakout
00:41star, and anyone who watched gymnastics at the London Olympics probably remembers why
00:45— her unimpressed expression after she placed second in the vault finals after losing out
00:49on the gold due to a fall.
00:51Maroney was genuinely disappointed in herself and wanted to make a comeback, but she ultimately
00:55retired a few years later due to health issues. Maroney overcame her life's tragedies and
01:00began building out a diverse career that now includes singing, songwriting, acting, writing,
01:04and advocacy. Quite the change, and with it came a very new look — one which led to
01:08some rumors of lip injections or cosmetic surgery. Maroney denied those rumors, explaining
01:13that she simply started getting into makeup and fashion after her gymnastics career, and
01:17her body was just naturally changing. As she told Seventeen,
01:21I think it freaks people out to see somebody change just a little bit. I don't mean to
01:24freak anybody out. At the end of the day, I have changed. It's good to keep evolving
01:28and growing."
01:29If you're familiar with Olympic ice skating, then you've almost certainly heard of one
01:33particular Olympic athlete who might have taken things too far — Tanya Harding, a
01:37very powerful and impressive skater back in the 1990s, and who competed in the 1992 and
01:411994 Olympics. Despite her technical abilities, she craved the commercial fame that her rival
01:46Nancy Kerrigan was receiving. To Harding, the only way to manage that was to win gold
01:50at the 1994 Games, and the best way to do that was to eliminate the competition. Harding's
01:55then-husband hired someone to attack Kerrigan and keep her from qualifying for the Games
01:59— pretty messed up, even for the Olympics. The plot was discovered, and Harding's reputation
02:03never fully recovered. She did, however, pivot into a different sport, and one very different
02:08from ice skating — boxing. Granted, this was back in the early 2000s, and her career
02:12as a professional boxer was relatively short. Still, it was a far cry from the elegance
02:17and sparkling outfits seen on the ice. Harding's first match took place in 2002, a celebrity
02:22matchup that she won, which caught the public eye and led her to officially go pro by the
02:25next year. And though she was far from the best at the sport, promoters noted that she
02:30was impressively tenacious, strong, and trained incredibly hard, putting her all into the
02:34new sport.
02:35These days, she lives a pretty quiet life. However, after the release of her biopic I,
02:39Tanya, she made numerous television appearances. Unsurprisingly, some of them got a bit uncomfortable
02:44when the Nancy Kerrigan scandal was brought up.
02:47You did know what they were planning to do, didn't you?
02:50No, I did not know anything prior. I did find out after the fact.
02:56Before Michael Phelps, U.S. star Mark Spitz was the biggest name in Olympic swimming.
03:00Representing the U.S. in both the 1968 Mexico City and 1972 Munich Olympics, Spitz etched
03:05his name into the annals of history by setting record after record in Munich. One of those
03:09was the record for the most gold medals won at a single Olympics, with Spitz returning
03:13from the Munich Games with seven golds.
03:15It wasn't just his athletic ability that stuck with people. Spitz's mustache made quite the
03:19impression, too. Spitz's mustache was iconic, and he's admitted to leaning into that. In
03:24fact, he'd grown the mustache for no particular reason, initially intending to shave it off
03:28before the competition.
03:29But Olympic swimmers didn't typically sport facial hair, and Spitz found that his competitors
03:33were fascinated. Some Russian coaches even questioned him about it, and he made the impulsive
03:37decision to keep it. Not only that, but he doubled down on his act.
03:42It deflects the water away from my mouth. It allows my head to get a lot lower and more
03:47streamlined."
03:48Spitz doesn't have the iconic mustache anymore, though. When asked why he shaved it off in
03:521988, he explained,
03:54Well, one, I'm not swimming anymore. And number two, it's started to turn gray. And number
03:58three, my wife had never seen me, nor my family, without the mustache. I haven't had it for
04:0320 years, so I'm happy."
04:04For those in need of a good underdog story, you need look no further than the miracle
04:09on the mat, which refers to the Greco-Roman heavyweight wrestling final in the 2000 Olympics.
04:14There, American Rulon Gardner was pitted against three-time Olympic gold medalist Alexander
04:19Karolin of Russia. Gardner's odds were far from great, to say the least, but he managed
04:23to pull off a huge upset victory and come out of the Games with a gold medal.
04:27Off the mat, though, Gardner's life wasn't looking quite as smooth. There were a couple
04:30of brushes with near-fatal accidents and bankruptcy, and following his last appearance at the 2004
04:35Athens Olympic Games, Gardner had gained well over 200 pounds, weighing in at a total
04:40of 474 pounds in 2011. That year, he was announced as a contestant on The Biggest Loser, where
04:46he lasted for 16 weeks and lost 173 pounds, only to suddenly pull out of the competition.
04:52Over the following decade, Gardner continued to make efforts to rejoin the wrestling scene,
04:55but he missed weigh-ins by being too heavy to compete.
04:59As a runner, two-time Olympic sprinter Nick Simmons knew how to get lean for competitions,
05:03but since retiring from the track after his appearances in the 2008 and 2012 Olympics,
05:08Simmons has shifted his interests, so his body has changed quite a bit, too.
05:11Simmons has spoken about those physical changes, explaining that he started really hitting
05:15the gym and lifting weights regularly after retiring from professional competition. As
05:20a result, he built up a significant amount of muscle mass that left him feeling healthier
05:23than he ever had been as a runner. Beyond that, he also took an interest in powerlifting
05:27and CrossFit competitions, and for that, he felt he needed to bulk up even further.
05:31And so his initial solution to that? Just eating. A lot. Figuring that having more mass
05:36would allow him to lift more weight, he let himself eat whatever he wanted. But Simmons
05:40later refined his approach to simply gaining as much muscle as possible. The routine has
05:44landed him with a physique considerably more muscular than the one he had as a runner.