Surely you remember McKayla Maroney. If you don’t, you remember her face – a sideways scowl that a billion cameras captured as she stood on the podium after winning the silver medal for vault during the 2012 London Olympics.
Remember?
Anyway, Maroney’s done with gymnastics for good and has chosen to move on to pursue something entirely different. In
an exclusive with
Us Weekly, Maroney details how hard it was for her to set aside the sport that had basically shaped who she was for her entire adult life.
“I lost myself. It was an identity crisis, no doubt,” the 20-year-old told Us of leaving the gymnastics world after multiple surgeries and health issues. “I would go and meet people and they’d tell me, ‘You’re the gymnast.’ And I’m like, now that I’m no longer a competing gymnast, it throws people off and that would throw me off. I don’t want to let people down. It was such a big test for me to be like, you know what? No! I’m worth more than a gold medal. I’m worth more than being a gymnast. I am not what I do. I am who I am and I’m what I love.”
Life post-international-gymnastic-renown hasn’t been the easiest and naturally, Maroney can’t just, I don’t know, post an Instagram photo of herself looking kind of like JoJo with a dash of Kylie Jenner without trolls screaming their opinions from the murky forests in which they reside.
Despite the fact that Maroney spent most of her life under extreme pressure to succeed, she sounds like a relatively well-adjusted individual and is pursuing music, as per the roadmap for those who became super-famous when they were young. I have high hopes for this endeavor, only because I want McKayla Maroney to become more than just a meme.
Her first single is called “Ghost” and will be released September 8.
