It’s a protracted fall from the Olympic podium to monetary damage — but it surely’s not an unusual path. Among the golden women and guys that nabbed medals, headlines and hearts years in the past at the moment are strapped for money, promoting their medals and even their our bodies for cash.
“Folks spend the higher a part of a decade attempting to make an Olympic sport or two. And after they lastly determine to hold it up, they’re behind their associates who entered the workforce a decade in the past,” Tom Jackovic, CEO of the USA Observe and Area Basis, instructed The Publish. “It’s at all times a battle.”
Ryan Lochte competed in 4 summer time video games — 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 — and have become probably the most adorned swimmers in Olympic historical past, profitable six gold medals, three silver and three bronze.
However, final month, the 41-year-old bought three of his golds at public sale for a mixed $385,520. He defended the transfer to followers on Instagram.
“I by no means swam for the gold medals,” he wrote on Instagram. “They have been simply the cherry on high of an unimaginable journey.”
The sale would appear to simply be the most recent troubled chapter for Lochte. In 2019, he instructed CNBC that he’d gone from making “nicely over $1 million” per yr to simply $75,000 from one sponsor and was residing paycheck to paycheck.
In 2022, he bought his silver and bronze medals for $122,000. Final yr, amidst his divorce from spouse Kayla Reid, it was revealed that the couple have been practically $270,000 in debt.
Olympic diver Greg Louganis can relate. In 2025, he revealed that he had bought three of his 5 medals — two golds and one silver — for $437,000. He additionally mentioned he’d bought his home as a result of he “wanted the cash” and was shifting to Panama.
“If I had correct administration, I won’t have been in that place,” Louganis, thought of by many to be the best diver of all time, mentioned.
Debi Thomas, now 58, initially had shiny prospects after profitable the bronze in determine skating in 1988 — following the epic “Battle of the Carmens” with East Germany’s Katarina Witt. She completed her undergrad at Stanford, went on to medical faculty at Northwestern, married a lawyer and have become an orthopedic surgeon.
However her life fell aside amidst private and inside struggles. By 2015, she was residing in a bug-infested trailer after two divorces. She’d let her medical license lapse and misplaced her medal to chapter.
“They’ll take away the medal, however they’ll’t take away the truth that I gained it,” Thomas, the primary African American to win a medal within the Winter Olympics, instructed The Publish in 2018.
Promoting a medal isn’t at all times an enormous payday.
Hockey participant Mark Wells, who was a part of the historic 1980 “Miracle on Ice” workforce, offloaded his medal for simply $40,000 in 2010 to pay for medical bills. Later that yr, the personal purchaser auctioned it off for $310,000.
In 2014, basketball participant Vin Baker. bought simply over $67k for his medal.
Even when former Olympians don’t must promote their treasured medals, they’ll nonetheless face excessive hardship.
In 2024, American-sweetheart Mary Lou Retton — who gained gold in gymnastics in 1984, when she was simply 16 — contracted a uncommon type of pneumonia however lacked insurance coverage to pay the hospital payments. Her daughters pushed out a fundraising marketing campaign that introduced in additional than $459,000 to assist the one-time queen of the bars.
Issues bottomed out final yr when Retton, 58, whose smiling face as soon as adorned Wheaties containers, was arrested for driving underneath the affect. As reported in The Publish, she incoherently berated officers however later took full duty for the incident.
World-class rower Daniel Walsh, 46, gained a bronze medal in 2008, and slept on folks’s couches for a stretch of time after the Olympics. However, he instructed The Publish, it may have been worse: “Considered one of my teammates, who was on the boat that gained a gold medal, he needed to sleep beneath a pool desk as a result of he couldn’t afford lease.”
Walsh mentioned he had bank card debt “within the tens of hundreds of {dollars}” after he left the US workforce and had no clue about the way to dwell in the actual world and handle cash.
“There was no fiscal literacy,” mentioned the rower, who now hosts the podcast “Quick Buddies.” “Funding that I obtained got here by way of as a 1099. I didn’t notice that I owed taxes on it and I didn’t write something off.”
He added that, “There may be an ego imbalance the place everyone needs to help you on the best way up and be hooked up to that success. However then, while you come away and search for a job, the very first thing you hear is, ‘Nicely, you don’t have any expertise.’”
One other concern is that huge success on the Olympics doesn’t at all times translate to huge endorsement offers.
Rulon Gardner was a heroic wrestler. In 2000, he took down a beforehand undefeated beast of a Russian named Aleksandr “The Russian Bear” Karelin to win gold.
It was a significant second in wrestling, dubbed “the miracle on the mat,” but it surely didn’t translate to an enormous pay day.
He bought just a few endorsement offers that paid round $5,000 every, which didn’t do a lot for the $70,000 in bank card debt he had, some on account of having to pay for meals and journey whereas competing. Thankfully for Gardner, he was capable of rating talking engagements to defray cash owed.
He was additionally defrauded by a lady, whom he mentioned took benefit of him and his cash. In 2012, he needed to declare chapter.
“I had an enormous mortgage they usually have been coming after me to pay it off,” Gardner instructed The Publish. Now 54, he’s promoting insurance coverage and has principally turned issues round for himself.
Others are nonetheless struggling. As coated in The Publish final yr, 1994 Olympic gold medalist Oksana Baiul, 48, needed to promote her $1.2 million mansion in Louisiana. It was reported that the world-class determine skater mentioned she “can’t make a residing.”
She additionally, in line with The Publish, misplaced custody of her daughter in a “tumultuous” divorce battle.
Klete Keller, 42, gained 5 Olympic gold medals in swimming occasions on the 2000, 2004 and 2008 video games.
However, years later after a divorce, he fell right into a “deep melancholy,” he instructed USA Swimming.
Monetary insecurity and homelessness adopted. “I used to be paying youngster help for my youngsters and couldn’t afford a spot, so I lived in my automobile for nearly a yr,” Keller instructed the outlet. “I had a Ford Fusion on the time, so at 6-foot-6, it was difficult to make the room to sleep. However I made it work.”
He went on to be concerned within the January 6 Capitol riot, plead responsible and get pardoned by Trump. “I do know my actions actually angered and brought about harm to hundreds of thousands of People,” he mentioned after the pardon.
Generally, the trail to insolvency is a sluggish burn. In 1976, Dorothy Hamill, 69, gained gold for determine skating and fame for wedge hairdo.
Years later she purchased the Ice Capades and took what she characterised to CNBC as defective funding recommendation from her husband. In 1996 she filed for chapter, one yr after divorcing her husband. She has since remarried and not too long ago hosted a determine skating present close to her present hometown of Indian Wells, Calif.
Present-day Olympians and hopefuls discover themselves with their very own challenges.
Veronica Fraley, 25, a discus thrower who achieved a private finest in the course of the 2024 Olympics in Paris, had bother paying her lease in the course of the run-up to the video games. (The unlikely pair of Taste Flav and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian in the end picked up the tab.)
Others rely on facet gigs.
Jessica Ramsey, a 34-year-old shot putter, is an assistant supervisor at a Memphis bakery who plans to compete within the 2028 video games.
“It’s very troublesome for a [shot putter],” Ramsey, who gained a bronze on the 2019 Pan American video games however fouled on the 2021 Olympics, instructed The Publish. “Possibly the gang doesn’t see it as thrilling. Possibly we’re not entertaining.”
However, she notes the battle is common for high athletes.
“If it doesn’t occur for you, what do you fall again on?” requested the mom of a 2-year-old daughter hopes to compete in Los Angeles in 2028. “Some folks fall into melancholy as a result of they don’t know who they’re outdoors of the game.”
German bobsledder Lisa Buckwitz has taken to OnlyFans to fund her desires — and she or he’s hardly the one Olympian to take action.
Buckwitz, who gained gold in 2018 and is Milano Cortino certain, not too long ago instructed a German outlet that being on the racy website is “the perfect factor that would have occurred to me.”
The athlete gives numerous subscriptions, from $59.98 for 3 months to $194.92 for 12 months.
“It’s a bit unhappy that I can’t simply deal with my aggressive sport,” she mentioned. “Positive, I’m an Olympic champion. However no one’s thinking about Lisa Buckwitz simply due to the gold medal.”
