Suzy Favor Hamilton has spent most of her life running, not just as a former U.S. Olympian, but from facing her mental illness.
For the first time, the three-time Olympic athlete and decorated middle-distance runner is revealing what fuelled her double life as a celebrated track hero by day and a high-priced Vegas escort by night, and how she is trying to move forward with her life now.
“It wasn’t Suzy. I keep trying to emphasize that wasn’t me. It was the disease,” Favor Hamilton told ABC News’ “20/20.” “The one word I keep saying, ‘shame,’ because it can grab hold of you and you can never recover, can never, ever get better. I won’t let it happen to me. I refuse. I refuse to let the act ruin me.”
Favor Hamilton found herself as the center of enormous scandal in 2012 when her secret alter ego as Vegas call girl “Kelly Lundy” was made public. In her new memoir, “Fast Girl: A Life Spent Running From Madness,” Favor Hamilton, 47, who suffers from bipolar disorder, said she was previously mis-diagnosed and put on the wrong medication that made her symptoms worse.
“I know for a matter of fact I would never have become an escort if I wasn’t on the drug that made me hypersexual. There’s no way possible,” Favor Hamilton said. “But I also know that I was having sex for money. So when I say that it was the bipolar’s fault I’m not pinning it on bipolar and looking at that as the excuse.”
Favor Hamilton said she had long struggled with anxiety and self-doubt, despite being the most decorated runner in college history when she was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin. The real turning point for her, she said, came when she purposefully fell and pretended to be injured while competing in the Women’s 1,500-meter race at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.
“I came around the final corner, and five girls passed me, and that dream of having an Olympic medal was gone, and instead of finishing the race, like most runners would, I told myself, ‘Just fall,’ and I fell immediately,” she said. “And that was the moment of my downward spiral. I didn’t know at the time, but that was Step One of terrible things to happen.”
