Livvy Dunne has lifted the lid on the gruesome ankle problem that killed her hopes of ever competing at the Olympics.
The former LSU star, who took up the sport aged 3, has become one of the richest and most recognizable gymnasts in the world over recent years.
She competed for Team USA as a youngster, reaching the Junior Olympics, and was home-schooled by her mother in a bid to reach the very top of the sport.
But Dunne’s Olympic dreams died when she was around 16. She suffered osteochondritis dissecans and a section of her ankle bone ‘died’.
‘I was actually competing on a hurt ankle, I think (at) the 2018 USA Championships and part of my ankle bone died,’ she told the ‘What’s Your Story? With Steph McMahon’ podcast.
‘It’s called an OCD. It just died. So my Olympic dreams died with it… it was so painful. That was one of my first real injuries’
Livvy Dunne has lifted the lid on the gruesome ankle problem that killed her Olympic dreams
‘Part of my ankle bone died,’ she told Steph McMahon on the ‘What’s Your Story?’ podcast
She added: ‘I did compete for Team USA and we would go to Italy to compete, we won gold. That was one of the biggest honors of my life but it was just not the right environment for me and I kept getting hurt.
‘So (I decided) I’m going to go enjoy the sport again in college, go to LSU, heal up and love the sport.’
Osteochondritis dissecans is a condition ‘in which bone underneath the cartilage of a joint dies due to lack of blood flow’, according to the Mayo Clinic.
‘It kind of healed a little bit, it stopped bothering me and I went to college after that,’ Dunne explained.
‘I’ve actually never got any surgery, which is kind of crazy for a gymnast and I was thinking: “If I give myself time to heal, I can heal without surgery.” So that’s something I take pride in.’
OCD most commonly affects the knee but also can impact people’s elbows, ankles and other joints.
Symptoms can appear after an injury or after months of activity, ‘especially high-impact activity such as jumping and running’.
Dunne is now 22 and earlier this year she called time on her gymnastics career after five seasons with LSU.
Dunne grew to become one of the richest and most recognizable gymnasts in the world
A decade earlier, she was pulled out of school to focus on gymnastics. From around seventh grade, Dunne was home-schooled and forced to curb her social life in a bid to reach the very top.
‘That’s when training became more rigorous and I knew I really wanted to go to the Olympics and I was on the USA National Team,’ she said.
‘So I knew I had to make a sacrifice and there’s a lot of different things (I gave up) – whether it’s a pool day with my friends, beach day, family vacations.’
Dunne continued: ‘Competing for the USA was what I wanted to do. So I had to skip those proms and field trips. It was give and take but it was very rewarding doing what I did and being able to compete for the United States. That’s a really cool thing that I get to say I did, which not a lot of people do.’
