It’s her choice but I’m sad to hear that US heavyweight lifting champ Holly Mangold is heading to the Biggest Loser. (I hate that show.)
“Mangold, who placed 10th in the super heavyweight division at the London Games, said the NBC weight-loss show reached out to her. Now, she’s a contestant on the series’ 15th season beginning Oct. 8.
“They’ve talked about how I was inspiration for big girls,” said Mangold, 23, in a video on the show’s website (full video below). ”I felt like I never got a chance to be the in-shape, smaller girl. I never had that chance. This is kind of like my second chance to do that. I wanted to show all of them you can do it.”
Her starting weight is 351 pounds. She weighed in at 346 pounds at the 2012 Olympics, 60 pounds heavier than anybody else in her weight class, which is set at 165 pounds and over. “I feel like that was my limiting factor the last run for the Olympics is I was too big for the super heavyweight,” said Mangold, the sister of New York Jets all-pro center Nick Mangold who played high school football. “I needed to be smaller so I could train harder.”
Read more here.
Obviously it’s Holly’s body and her choice but I will note that her 300 + lb pro football playing brother hasn’t signed up. I also hope they take a sports nutrition approach (Holly is an Olympic athlete, after all) rather than your standard calorie restricted diet approach. A girl can dream, right?
But I’m not hopeful.
