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After golden glow, medallists head back to reality
For 100 metres champion Justin Gatlin and a handful of others leaving Athens after the Games, an Olympic gold medal may be the key to fame and fortune.
For 100 metres champion Justin Gatlin and a handful of others leaving Athens after the Games, an Olympic gold medal may be the key to fame and fortune.
For most, like Amanda Freed, it opens up a few weeks of unaccustomed limelight, family parties -- and potentially embarrassing attention from airline crews and passengers -- before it will be back to the reality of studies and work.
"For a couple of weeks we're going to have fun," Freed, a member of the U.S. softball team that won gold against Australia, said after showing the pilot her medal and posing for photographs for gushing fellow passengers flying out of Athens.
"We're on the cover of Sports Illustrated, which is great."
The 24-year-old from Cypress, California was charm itself in the face of unfamiliar gushing attention on her solo flight home via London, smiling even at a quip from the flight deck -- about needing more fuel to fly the gold.
But with little in the way of professional prospects in softball, she knows her priorities lie elsewhere.
Was the medal going to change her life? "Not at all."
Right now, it was back home to present her -- still almost fresh -- medallist's posy to her mother, see family and friends and then back to reality:
"I'm going to get my masters from UCLA in two weeks," said the sociology graduate who lists her ambitions as having a family and a "stable career in special education".
"Then I plan to go back to school."
