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So much for our interest in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio because we just found out that there won’t be any McKayla Maroney competing in it.
That’s right, at just 20-years-old McKayla Maroney is stepping away from the game.
The 2012 Olympic gold medal winner announced today that she is retiring from competition and gave a litany of pretty good reasons why.
In an interview on the GymCastic podcast (which you can watch below) Maroney talks about how much her body has suffered since the 2012 Games and not just from the nasty leg injury that she experienced while competing there.
Transcript via Fox Sports…
“I just got really unhealthy again…. Since October of 2014, I would go back to the gym and then burn myself out for three months, and I did that until probably a couple month ago. I would go to doctor after doctor. I got so many blood tests… I was so unhealthy and tired that I couldn’t get out of bed.”
As for why she made this decision now…
“I wanted to show people that when everyone else is up against them, they can get through the struggle and the pain and do it because they love something. One day I was sitting outside and I was like ‘Why am I doing this?’ …. I didn’t know how to be okay with not being a gymnast. I go to a Starbucks or Jamba Juice or anything and they’re like ‘Are you going to the next one?’ Until the other day, I was not OK with saying no.”
Makes sense to me, but we’ll certainly be sad to see her go.
At least we’ll always have Instagram…
