Three-time Olympian reveals double life as Vegas escort
Struggling in her marriage and mired in depression, three-time Olympian Suzy Favor Hamilton coped by turning to a life of prostitution, working for an escort service based in Las Vegas.
"I do not expect people to understand," Favor Hamilton wrote Thursday in one of a series of posts to her Twitter account after The Smoking Gun website reported on her double life. "But the reasons for doing this made sense to me at the time and were very much related to depression."
The Smoking Gun said the 44-year-old athlete has been working for the last year for a Las Vegas escort service that booked her for dates there, as well as in Los Angeles, Houston and Chicago.
One of the country's best-ever middle-distance runners, Favor Hamilton competed for the U.S. at the Olympics in 1992, 1996 and 2000 but did not win a medal. She won seven U.S. national titles. She lives in Madison, Wis., where, The Smoking Gun reported, she and her husband, Mark, live in a $600,000 home and appear to be in no financial distress based on the website's review of court and municipal records.
Favor Hamilton told the website that only her husband was aware of her escort work, but that, "He tried, he tried to get me to stop. He wasn't supportive of this at all."
The website reported that Favor Hamilton worked under the alias "Kelly Lundy" but said she told some of her clients about her true identity and suspected one of them outed her.
Soon after the story appeared online, Favor Hamilton released a series of tweets saying in part that she was "drawn to escorting in large part because it provided many coping mechanisms for me when I was going through a very challenging time with my marriage and my life."
A nine-time NCAA champion for Wisconsin, Favor Hamilton is the namesake of the Big Ten's Suzy Favor Athlete of the Year Award, given to the conference's top female athlete.
Neither Favor Hamilton nor officials from the Big Ten immediately responded to requests from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Favor Hamilton is a three-time outdoor 1,500-meter national champion and a three-time indoor national champion - her last title coming in 1999.
"As crazy as I know it seems, I never thought I would be exposed, therefore never hurting anybody," she said in one Twitter post.
In another, she says she is seeking psychological care for her problem.
She closes her series of tweets by saying, "I fully intend to make amends and get back to being a good mother, wife, daughter, and friend."
"I do not expect people to understand," Favor Hamilton wrote Thursday in one of a series of posts to her Twitter account after The Smoking Gun website reported on her double life. "But the reasons for doing this made sense to me at the time and were very much related to depression."
The Smoking Gun said the 44-year-old athlete has been working for the last year for a Las Vegas escort service that booked her for dates there, as well as in Los Angeles, Houston and Chicago.
One of the country's best-ever middle-distance runners, Favor Hamilton competed for the U.S. at the Olympics in 1992, 1996 and 2000 but did not win a medal. She won seven U.S. national titles. She lives in Madison, Wis., where, The Smoking Gun reported, she and her husband, Mark, live in a $600,000 home and appear to be in no financial distress based on the website's review of court and municipal records.
Favor Hamilton told the website that only her husband was aware of her escort work, but that, "He tried, he tried to get me to stop. He wasn't supportive of this at all."
The website reported that Favor Hamilton worked under the alias "Kelly Lundy" but said she told some of her clients about her true identity and suspected one of them outed her.
Soon after the story appeared online, Favor Hamilton released a series of tweets saying in part that she was "drawn to escorting in large part because it provided many coping mechanisms for me when I was going through a very challenging time with my marriage and my life."
A nine-time NCAA champion for Wisconsin, Favor Hamilton is the namesake of the Big Ten's Suzy Favor Athlete of the Year Award, given to the conference's top female athlete.
Neither Favor Hamilton nor officials from the Big Ten immediately responded to requests from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Favor Hamilton is a three-time outdoor 1,500-meter national champion and a three-time indoor national champion - her last title coming in 1999.
"As crazy as I know it seems, I never thought I would be exposed, therefore never hurting anybody," she said in one Twitter post.
In another, she says she is seeking psychological care for her problem.
She closes her series of tweets by saying, "I fully intend to make amends and get back to being a good mother, wife, daughter, and friend."
How humiliating for the husband. She should have at least had the common decency to say he knew nothing of her other life. The fact he knew and stayed with her makes him look VERY pathetic.
Why is this anyone's business? Sounds like tabloid fodder...
Note to self: Â Never get married. Â It seems they sell it now no matter what they are doing.
Well, the media and the holier-than-thou gossip types can get their rocks off on it but other than that, all the Smoking Gun did is destroy somebody's reputation to support it's own otherwise-irrelevant publication.
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All you have to do in America to be The Smoking Gun is dredge up celebrity mugshots and sell ads for web-hits, and then post to the AP when you find one, so that the major sensationalist-gossip networks will carry your website, which will generate millions of hits to your website. Eventually, somebody's gonna get busted for something.
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If I were her husband I would try to find out what was wrong with her and then I would encourage her to get help before she destroys herself.
@Playanekes Very well said
I won't judge her on this. She has to live with this. I would certainly bail on her if I was her husband.
 @The Resistance Me too.  My thought would be something isn't right about the whole situation and probably also with him if he put up with it.
I'm not sorry to say that I don't think there is anything wrong with this. At least she is doing it with class and isn't slumming around on the streets like the ladies do on 82nd. It's kind of her own problem to deal with, if that's what it is. But I really don't see the issue. It's legal in the area, if I am correct. (Reno)
 @Sarbar You see nothing wrong with your husband asking you to stop prostituting yourself, but you continue to do so until it becomes public knowledge?
This is her and her families business alone. There is so much hypocrisy in this country if everyone would just "come out" so to speak, a person could look one another in the eye with honesty. As a husband I don't think I could go along with something like this but hiding it would be so much worse.Â
This is too bad that this went public. It sure makes it much more difficult for their marriage to be repaired. For her husband, being reminded of this in the news and from friends/family will only make it a much bigger hurdle to regain trust in his wife and to truely forgive her. Plus, friends and family will make it very difficut - they will be telling him to take the easy way out with a divorce. Or they will shun her for what she did.
Not my wife- never would that happen
 @LostSoul I've heard that one before...
 @LostSoul Why?  Does she look like a cave troll?
Bummer story, hope she finds the help she needs.
So nice to see how many people have slammed her alread without knowing much about her and her life story. There doesn't seem to be a lot of empathy and sympathy in the world these days just more judging and criticizing. So glad its the holiday season.
She told some of her clients who she really was but never thought she would be exposed?
 @pdx10 Maybe subconsciously opening up (showing vulnerability) in the hopes of finding her Prince Charming to sweep her away from her struggling marriage?
 @str1ngb3nd3r More likely she subconsciously wanted to get caught
Bipolar.Â
So is Carrie Mathison. Look how well that turned out.
And in today's who cares news..................
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She got paid for doing a job.
Does it really matter?
I know nothing about her, but I support her. She seems very intelligent and a lot of fun when she is together inside herself. Good luck to you sweetheart, and if you find yourself near the bottom of the bucket again, come find swimbad, he'll pick you up again, one cheek at a time!
I'd be really surprised if drugs didn't play a part in it. They tend to make you promiscuous and age prematurely. Two facts we can clearly see from this story.
"I'd rather have two girls at 22 then one girl at 44" - W.C. Fields
Doesn't look like anything to spectacular to me....
@pdxd Same here, but it a lot would depend on what her rates were. I assume she'll be able to charge double now.
 @JTesla Doubling something that you already have to provide a mail-in rebate on, isn't really a good deal though.....
"Hi Suzy..I'm Agent __________ with the Internal Revenue Service. When you're done with the talk show circuit and eventual book signing tour, I was wondering if we might have a little chat. How would that be?
Sounds like she just wanted someone to love her.. =(
reminds me of my ex-gf
Meh.
 @JTesla You misspelled "meth".