Yes, we do love a little celebrity gossip but we also know it’s not cool to do something we teach our kids NOT to do. It’s never okay to indulge in stuff meant to humiliate or hurt another person. That’s why we came up with the concept of celeb news minus any mean stuff. Have as much as you want and share it with your celeb-loving friends because this “dish” is all guilt-free.
Check out these inspiring stories of just a few of the 2016 Summer Olympians. If you think you can’t do something or aren’t good enough these Olympians will make you think differently! Just WOW!
BERNARD LAGAT
The 41-year-old has made history as the oldest American to ever run at an Olympic games. At the Olympic trials for Rio, he came from behind to pass five runners – some 15 years his junior – in the final lap of the men’s 5,000 meter. “I train with young guys and I don’t believe that I’m old,” Lagat said after the race, according to Sports Illustrated. “If you believe that you’re old, you’re going to run like an old man.” After qualifying for his fifth Olympics, Lagat collapsed on the track, overcome with emotion. His daughter Gianni, however, is less enthused. “My daughter,” he told Yahoo Sports, “tells me, ‘Daddy, I want you to make it to the Olympics so I can watch gymnastics.'”
WILLIAM TAN
Tan, a 59-year-old doctor with paraplegia who survived stage IV leukemia, was born into poverty in Singapore, losing the use of his legs to polio at age 2. “It was a very, very difficult time of my childhood,” he told ABC in 2007. “My fellow classmates were not very accepting. They called me names, they bullied me.” Since representing Singapore at the 1988 Paralympics in Seoul, he has set six world wheelchair marathon records and helped to raise more than $18 million for charities around the world. Despite being diagnosed with stage IV leukemia in 2009 and being told he had just 12 months to live, he went into remission after six months of chemotherapy – and is now training to compete in the 2016 Rio Paralympics.
ARIES MERRITT
In 2013, the track and field star – who nabbed gold during the 2012 Olympics and holds the world record in the 110-meter hurdles – was diagnosed with collapsing FSGS, a genetic kidney disease. “I was told I wouldn’t be able to do anything ever again,” Merritt tells PEOPLE. “I would have to sit in the hospital and get dialysis and wait for a translate.” After years of hospital stays and experimental drug treatments, Merritt, 30, continued to compete. In 2015, his kidney stopped functioning to the point where a transplant was the only option – luckily, his sister LaToya Hubbard was a match. Now, his health is better than ever, and he’s ready to take Rio, thanks to an unusually speedy recovery. “I kept pushing forward and saying there has to be another way to get around this. And I found that way.”
SYDNEY MCLAUGHLIN
After setting a world junior record in the 400-meter hurdles, 16-year-old McLaughlin – who almost didn’t run the U.S. Olympic track and field trials – will be the youngest American track athlete to compete in an Olympics since 1972, the Wall Street Journal reports. “The first day, I got here and I had a nervous breakdown and I wasn’t going to run because I was just so nervous,” she told the Journal about the event in Oregon. “[My coaches] pushed me through it, and now here I am. I am on the team, so I thank them for that.” McLaughlin, a New Jersey native, ran her first competitive track race when she was just 6 years old. “I think sometimes I get caught up in the fact that I haven’t lost a hurdle race, and then I come here and there are girls who are faster than me,” she told ESPN. “I think just realizing that sometimes you have to lose in order to get better. It’s a big thing for me.”
You can watch these amazing athletes and more when the 2016 Olympics air this Friday August 5th on NBC.
Source: People Magazine August 8th, 2016
