5 Stars Who Once Dreamed of Competing in the Olympics
The 2016 Rio Olympics are currently in full swing, and while many young children dream of competing in the Games regardless of their athletic abilities, there are a few celebrities who, at one point, actually came close to making the cut.
Geena Davis may have put her baseball skills on display as Dottie Hinson in the 1992 hit A League of Their Own, but that’s not the only sport she’s shown real potential in. At 41, Davis took up archery, and “I qualified to go to the Olympic trials,” she told kidsinthehouse.com. “So it’s apparently something I never expected to find myself doing in my 40s, but it was certainly really fun.”
The actress first discovered her talent while learning how to shoot pistols for The Long Kiss Goodnight. In a 2015 interview with espnW, Davis revealed that her shooting coach told her she “had a freaky natural ability at pistol shooting” and “could probably compete if [she] wanted to.” The Oscar winner went on to explain that while she wasn’t sure about pistols, she became inspired to try archery after watching the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and after two and a half years of training, she went on to compete for a spot on the U.S. archery team ahead of the Sydney Summer Olympics in 2000. Davis finished 24th out of 28 women competing in the semifinals of the Olympic trials.
Then there is Jason Statham, who was inspired to join the British diving team at the age of 11 after watching a guy on the high dive while on a family vacation in Florida. Statham was on the team for about 10 years and competed in three Olympic trials. He told Katie Couric that while he “never went to the Olympics,” he competed in “tons of Internationals all around the world.”
And did you know that before Salma Hayek became an actress she was a young gymnast with promise? In a 2002 interview with the New Zealand Herald, she revealed that she was drafted to be part of Mexico’s Olympic team. “I was 8 or 9, and my father said no because I would have had to go live in Mexico City in a boarding school for gymnasts, do six hours, eight hours a day of training.” Hayek said the training schedule would have been “like paradise” for her, but unfortunately her Olympic dreams never came to fruition.
Check out this video for a look at five celebs who had Olympic aspirations, and tune in to The Insider With Yahoo on TV tonight for the latest in entertainment news.
