From track star to callgirl
‘Paid sex is better than the Olympics’
SHE was an admired Olympic athlete, with a string of endorsements earned through fast times, good looks and a wholesome image.
Then her psychological demons drove Suzy Favor Hamilton to take an extraordinary risk on retirement, and in 2012 reporters exposed her life as a $600-an-hour Las Vegas prostitute.
At the time, she said she had made a huge mistake, triggered by depression, but that she was not a victim.
In her memoir, published by HarperCollins next week, the former middle-distance runner, 47, explains what she meant.
She writes how, after a childhood full of ‘‘secret pain’’ and bulimia, she adopted a new persona and became ‘‘Kelly . . . a confident, powerful woman’’, who persuaded her loving husband of 20 years to let her have sex with wealthy strangers for money.
She did it for the adrenaline rush, according to Fast Girl: A Life Spent Running from Madness.
She told Mark Hamilton, her husband: ‘‘I had to do this if I was going to be happy. Somehow he agreed.’’
It started with a trip with him to Las Vegas, when she hired an escort for a threesome as a wedding anniversary present.
She became convinced ‘‘that I could please clients even more than she’d pleased me’’.
She describes the thrill of earning ‘‘$1200 doing something I loved’’ with the handsome ‘‘CEO of a major corporation’’ in ‘‘one of the fanciest hotel suites in Las Vegas’’.
She writes: ‘‘This is way better than winning a race, I thought . . . better than . . . the Olympics.
‘‘My need to be unsurpassed in the bedroom had replaced the need to be best on the track.
‘‘Everything about being an escort was enjoyable.’’
Her cover was blown a year later, and she had bipolar disorder diagnosed: the symptoms include increased sex drive and a tendency towards risky behaviour.
She now has a ‘‘life of contentment’’ after finding the right dosage of Lamictal, ‘‘the drug that has finally quieted my mind’’.
She aims to be a role model, to feel no shame and to ‘‘show others, especially my daughter, that you have to live for yourself, and that with love and help you can claw your way back from a dark place’’.