While the Olympics are going on, Olympic athletes are treated as people on top of the world
— especially if they medal. But an Olympic win doesn't translate to a perfect life. Here
are the true tragic details about these legendary Olympians.
Prior to the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Michael Phelps is still the most-medaled Olympian
in history, so far. He has a gorgeous wife, three vivacious kids, is worth $55 million,
and is young enough to enjoy it all. In other words, Michael Phelps appears to be living
the American dream.
However, like 17.3 million other American adults, Phelps suffers from depression. According
to Today, the star swimmer's depression affects his entire family. He has had bouts of alcohol
abuse and in 2014 was arrested for driving under the influence.
In 2018, he opened up about his struggles with depression in an appearance on Today,
saying that at one point, he didn't even want to be alive anymore. But then, he finally
realized that he could ask for help.
"I finally realized that I can ask for help and it's OK to not be OK and for me, that's
what changed my life."
Writing for Psychology Today, Steven Ilardi describes depression as one of the, quote,
"most tragically misunderstood words in the English language." That's because it's a condition
that's often conflated with sadness. The differences, says Ilardi, are stark. Sadness is a response
to everything from life's little mishaps to outright tragedies; it is natural but momentary.
Depression, he explains, is a chemical disorder that can last months and even cause brain
damage. The Mayo Clinic described depression as a long-term condition with a myriad of
symptoms ranging from listlessness to physical pain to suicidal thoughts, and says that medication,
psychotherapy, or both can help.
Depression is a daily battle for Phelps. Even with a loving and understanding family, he
related to Today that the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic spun him into a deep low.
He says that journaling, meditation, and exercising help.
It is hard to understate how thoroughly, almost gleefully, hated Tonya Harding was after the
notorious 1994 attack on her rival Nancy Kerrigan. The two professional ice skaters were already
stylistically opposed — Kerrigan was graceful and elegant in her movements, which judges
loved, while Harding was more muscular and fierce, which judges didn't care for. After
Shane Stant, an associate of Harding's then-husband, clubbed Kerrigan across the knees, the differences
boiled down to "Kerrigan: victim" and "Harding: evil."
Let there be no doubt that Kerrigan was a victim; that she took the silver at the Lillehammer
Olympics is a testament to her resilience. But Harding was ruined.
Her role in the assault depends on who you believe; her husband, Jeff Gillooly, said
Harding was the mastermind, but Harding claimed it was all Gillooly's idea.
Harding took a plea bargain for obstruction, but was banned for life from the only job
she ever knew, as well as a legacy that was rightfully hers.
Whatever the world thinks about her, one thing is absolutely certain: Harding was the first
American woman to successfully nail a triple axel, a dangerously difficult maneuver. In
1987, she pulled it off flawlessly, three times in the same competition. Throw in a
scrappy underdog story, and you had a bad-girl-done-good story for the ages.
Harding was vilified by both press and pop culture, and floundered for years trying to
make a living. Her image was rehabilitated somewhat by 2017's Academy Award-winning film
"I,Tonya," but she will likely never compete in the sport that made her famous again.
In 1993, Steffi Graf was the one to beat in the world of tennis. Monica Seles did just
that, and gave every impression it was going to stay that way, until she got a knife in
the back. Literally.
The incident occurred as 19-year-old Seles was leading Magdalena Maleeva at the 1993
Citizen Cup in Hamburg, Germany. She was sitting in her chair during a changeover when Gunter
Parche, a man later described by tabloids as a "deranged Steffi Graf fan," came out
of the crowd and stabbed Seles from behind. The knife didn't hit any vital organs, but
penetrated an inch into her back and sent her to the hospital.
Until that point, Seles was the top women's tennis player in the world. She won her first
major title at 16, nabbed three consecutive French Open wins, three Australian Opens,
two U.S. Open victories, and claimed seven of the previous nine Grand Slams. Then came
Parche, and his obsessive desire for Graf to regain the No. 1 title.
Though the wound wasn't life-threatening, it changed Seles' life. Suffering from lingering
pain and post-traumatic stress disorder after the attack, Seles was absent from tennis for
two and a half years, in which time Graf did indeed retake her former No. 1 standing.
Parche was declared mentally unfit and did not serve prison time. Following that spectacularly
lenient decision, Seles vowed never to play in Germany again. She did eventually return
to the sport, and she even took the bronze at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, but she never
regained her career highs.
The tragedies of the Oscar Pistorius case are myriad: A young woman is dead, the racial
and gender politics of a nation were blown up, the physically disabled lost their star
player, and a man who was an undisputed sports icon is responsible for all of it.
On February 13, 2013, South African runner Pistorius was a living legend with a spectacular
story. Born with fibular hemimelia, his legs were amputated below the knee when he was
11 months old. Despite this, as the BBC noted in 2007, he became a world-class runner on
par with able-bodied athletes. His use of prosthetic carbon fiber blades led the press
to dub Pistorius "Blade Runner."
In fact, by the time "the fastest man on no legs" made it to the London Olympics — the
first amputee to do so in track and field — he was one of the most-medaled runners
on the pitch, with wins at several Paralympic Games, the World Championships in Athletics,
and the African Athletics Championships. An Olympic medal eluded him, but he was clearly
the darling of the Games.
On February 14, 2013, it was all destroyed when Pistorius shot dead his girlfriend, model
Reeva Steenkamp, and blamed it on an imaginary Black man. Initially, as Sports Illustrated
recaps, it was thought to be a terrible accident: Pistorius said that in the dark night, he
mistook Steenkamp for a burglar. However, as the investigation proceeded, it was revealed
that Steenkamp was shot four times through a locked bathroom door, and reports of domestic
fights emerged. There was no burglar, and by making up a story about a Black robber,
Pistorius tapped into South Africa's delicate racial politics and what the Guardian called
"the old white fear of the black peril." Pistorius was found guilty of manslaughter, and sentenced
to 15 years in prison.
The tragedy of Jesse Owens is two-fold. Despite winning gold medals in the 100- and 200-meter
dashes, the long jump, and the 4x100 relay at the 1936 Olympiad in Berlin, when Owens
returned to the USA, he didn't return to wealth. He had to race horses and dogs to make a living
because Jim Crow laws made it all but impossible for a Black runner to capitalize on his success
in white America.
Simply put, for all his legitimate greatness, Owens could not win against the institutionalized
racism of the era. President Roosevelt snubbed him in favor of white Olympic victors, and
Kendi writes that Owens felt he had a better reception in Nazi Germany than he did in the
United States. He is reported to have said,
"Hitler didn't snub me — it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn't even
send me a telegram."
In a breathtaking suckerpunch, Owens' achievements were actually co-opted into the racist views
of the time, with some seeing his abilities as a result of his race rather than his individual
talents. Perhaps the biggest tragedy of Jesse Owens is that it took the world so long to
see the man for what he was.
It was a fall no one could have predicted. Bronze medalist Debi Thomas was once one of
America's best professional skaters, and the first Black woman to take a Winter Olympiad
medal. The Toronto Star describes Thomas as an accomplished type-A woman who for a while
had it all: She was enrolled in college while competing, and after retiring from skating,
graduated from Stanford with an engineering degree. She then attended medical school at
Northwestern University, married a handsome lawyer, had a beautiful son, and became an
orthopedic surgeon.
But today, Thomas lives in a mobile home, lost her medal to bankruptcy, is unemployed,
twice divorced, and hasn't seen her family in years. She espouses various conspiracy
theories, her medical license is expired, and she peddles gold bullion online as a way
to fend off financial apocalypse. What happened?
"Are you open to the possibility that your brain is not working at maximum capacity?"
The easiest answer is that Thomas suffers from bipolar disorder, a condition she reportedly
contested and left untreated. She moved from Illinois to the impoverished coal town of
Richlands, Virginia to start her practice, and left her husband and son in the process.
In 2012, she got into an altercation with her partner involving a gun. When the police
arrived, Thomas reportedly said she wanted to hurt herself.
As a result of the incident, she underwent a psychological evaluation and was diagnosed
with bipolar disorder. She was unable to keep her medical practice going, and the bills
started to add up.
In 2015, she made a reality TV appearance on an Oprah Winfrey Network show, in which
she said "I did the best I could."
A bonafide prodigy of the game, Jennifer Capriati made the youngest-ever professional tennis
debut in 1990, when she was just 13 years and 11 months old. Her strength lay in her
power and consistency, and her bubbly personality positioned her to be the a favorite of the
Women's Tennis Association. When Capriati took the gold at the 1992 Olympics, everything
seemed peachy. Looking back, ESPN observes that the attention and pressure at such a
young age may have been the problem.
As observed by the New York Times, Capriati was heavily promoted as a lily-white goody-goody,
the all-American sweetheart of tennis. So much so, in fact, that minor infractions mutated
into major catastrophes and PR disasters. When Capriati was recovering from an injury
at age 16, she was caught shoplifting and in possession of marajuana. For an athlete
with such a wholesome and clean-cut image, it was a big deal.
Capriati rallied in 1998 with a Wimbledon win, but by 2002, her performances began to
decline. A shoulder injury in 2004 ended her career at the premature age of 28, sending
her into a deep depression.
Since then, Capriati has stumbled. In 2010, she overdosed on pills, and she stalked and
attacked her boyfriend in 2013, for which she undertook 30 hours of community service
and an anger-management class. Capriati was inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame in 2012
— a definite high — but her lows are a familiar warning of "too much, too fast, too
soon."
When diver Greg Louganis famously hit his head on the Olympic springboard in 1988, he
was lucky to walk away with stitches and a concussion. That he recovered and took the
gold for the event gave the press goo-goo eyes for the man's fortitude. But what most
didn't know was that a head wound was chump change to the massive hit Louganis was already
dealing with: He had been diagnosed as HIV positive just six months before.
The four-time Olympic gold medalist told ESPN in 2016,
"Had they known about my HIV status at the '88 Olympics in Seoul, I would have never
been allowed into the country."
As it turned out, Louganis crashed into the safest place in all South Korea; the chlorinated
water of the pool neutralized the virus in his spilled blood.
But his status was just one more secret the deeply closeted Louganis had to keep in a
sports world that at the time was rampant with homophobic machismo. In 1988, homosexuality
was a career killer, and HIV/AIDS was a killer flat-out, leaving little question that Louganis
would have been ostracized rather than celebrated.
Like many closeted athletes, Louganis had private lows alongside very public highs.
A 1995 Newsweek article gives a harrowing account of his early life, from being born
to unmarried parents to his adoption into a family headed by an alcoholic father. He
endured racial slurs for his dark skin, was belittled for his dyslexia, and was called
"sissy" over his love of acrobatics. His teenage years were marred with drug use and a suicide
attempt. In his autobiography "Breaking the Surface," Louganis recounts how he fell into
a destructive relationship with a man who sexually assaulted him at knifepoint. Beyond
his accomplishments as an athlete, the fact that Louganis is now in his 60s, healthy,
and a beloved sports icon and gay superstar is a medal-worthy story in and of itself.
When long-distance runner Steve Prefontaine got behind the wheel with a blood-alcohol
content of 0.16 percent in 1975, he was already a legend. His entry at Olympics.com records
that he was the American record holder for every distance race from 2,000 meters to 10K.
But in a tragic and avoidable turn of events, the man the world knew as "Pre" lost control
of his vehicle, hit a boulder, flipped the vehicle, and was pinned under the wreck. He
survived the crash, but was asphyxiated by the weight of the car and died at the young
age of 24.
It is, of course, speculation as to what other career highs Prefontaine could have reached,
but the man was likely set for greatness on and off the track. With a running style Olympics.com
calls "cocky," Prefontaine bucked tradition by sprinting at the start of his races and
maintained strong leads. Good-looking and charismatic, he was a genuine sports hero,
with "Go Pre" being a popular t-shirt logo at the time.
That pop culture gravitas, says John Moriello of Sportscasting, was a power Prefontaine
used to his advantage for athletes of all sorts; leveraging his fame, he worked to successfully
overturn the Amateur Athletic Union prohibition of corporate sponsorships and commercial contracts
that all but condemned amateur sportspeople to live and train in poverty. Moriello notes
that court win may be as much a part of Prefontaine's legacy as his running.
"We are definitely reaping the benefits of the things that he was speaking out against
at that time."
Olympic glory slipped from his grasp at the Munich Olympics in 1972, but he was considered
the frontrunner for the 1976 games, an Olympiad he would never see. The untimely death of
Prefontaine sent shockwaves through the sports world, with posthumous tributes ranging from
the Prefontaine Classic, an annual track and field meet held at the University of Oregon,
to several films about the man.
Now in her 80s, Dawn Fraser is a four-time Olympic gold medalist and a legend in her
native Australia. Being one of the star swimmers in Melbourne in 1956, Rome in 1960, and Tokyo
in 1964, she has a resume most would-be mermaids would give a fin for. She even gained a bit
of notoriety when, during the Tokyo Olympiad, she was arrested for stealing a flag from
the entrance to the Emperor's Palace. As Olympic.com reports, the international incident ended
on the best possible note: The charges were dropped, the emperor gave her the flag as
a gift, and there were warm fuzzy feelings all around.
But Fraser's life wasn't all awards and accomplishments. By the time she competed in Tokyo, she had
survived two sexual assaults, had thoughts of suicide, endured domestic violence, and
was reeling from the fact she had been behind the wheel in a car accident that had tragically
killed her mother just eight months earlier.
Complicating things further, Fraser was kept in the dark about her culpability in her mother's
death. In the days after the accident, her family said her mother died of a heart attack
and not the accident itself. As she related to the Sydney Morning Herald in 2004, it was
not until 2001, when Fraser was writing an autobiography, that she finally learned the
truth. At a training camp in 2019, she finally confronted the memory fully. Fraser said,
"I burst out that I was driving the car that killed my mother. Everyone burst into tears
and I cried with them. It got me over some sort of hurdle. I'd just locked it up inside
of me."
Fraser is now the elder stateswoman of her sport in Australia, and has even served in
the country's Parliament.
According to BettyRobinson.org, a young Betty Robinson found herself missing the train to
school, so she ran after it and caught up. Her biology teacher was on the same train,
and recognized her remarkable running speed. With a little training, Robinson was on a
boat to the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics that year. TeamUSA details how the 16-year-old ran a
world-record time of 12.2 seconds in the 100-meter to win the gold. Amsterdam was the first Olympiad
in which women competed in track and field, making Robinson the first female runner to
medal at the Olympics. This is what she should be known for.
Instead, she may go down in history for a plane crash. In 1931 Robinson took a ride
with her cousin in his biplane. At around 2,000 feet up, the plane stalled, nosedived,
and crashed. Rescuers thought Robinson, who had been severely injured with a broken arm,
shattered leg, and a gash to the head, was dead. The undertaker realized that she was
in a coma and hurried her to the hospital. The Evening American reported,
"Lying almost paralyzed on a cot, Betty Robinson today fought to win the hardest race she ever
ran — a race in which the Grim Reaper was pacing her."
Robinson spent 11 weeks recuperating, much of it unconscious. Yet this is one of the
great Olympic comebacks; not only did she recover from the coma, Robinson rehabilitated
herself back into running form. She could no longer bend her knees enough to crouch
into the stocks, so she trained for the 4x100 relay in the 1936 Berlin Olympiad. And when
the Germans dropped the baton in mid-race, she took home her second gold.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Grunge videos about the Olympics
are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.