If there's one cliche to stereotype Olympic athletes with, it's that they'll stop at nothing to reach their goals, even when that means doing some unbelievable stuff.
In the odd case of one athlete it meant opening a brothel.
Logan Campbell, a Taekwondo athlete from New Zealand , did just that in 2009 after spending $90,000 to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. After the Games, Campbell decided his debts were placing an undue burden on his parents, so he followed his 23-year-old instincts and, along with a business partner, opened a "gentleman's club" in Auckland, hoping to raise at least $200,000 to compete in London.
"I came home after the Olympics, and I had no job and nothing to do," he explained in a recent interview with Yahoo. "I needed to make some money if I wanted to go to the next one in London, so bam!"
Understandably, Cambell's parents weren't exactly sold on the idea, though they later came around. "Mum was hesitant but she met the girls, a couple came over to her house and she was sweet as," Campbell told the Fairfax NZ News. "She realized they were just normal people supporting their kids and stuff."
Less forgiving was the New Zealand Olympic Committee, who sent him a threatening letter that read, in part:
Your open solicitation of 'clients' for your 'business' while using the Olympic or Olympian connection must cease immediately, or the NZOC will be forced to consider taking legal action against you.
Unlike most other countries, prostitution in New Zealand is a legal, regulated industry. But that hasn't spared it a somewhat seedy reputation and something the Olympic Committee there found unbecoming of a top-tier athlete children could look up to as a role model.
For his part, Cambell defended the business, telling 3 News at the time, "I’m not exploiting anyone. No one has to be here, we're not forcing anyone to be here, they're here on their own free will."
But as the story spread, raising his profile with it, he says funding for New Zealand's Taekwondo program started to flow. "As soon as I was in the media and stuff – we had never had funding, ever, EVER in the history of taekwondo, and all of a sudden it was, like, bam! There was this funding so it was sweet,” Campbell described to Forbes.
After funding began in earnest, the Taekwondo competitor decided to leave the brothel world behind. He sold the club in 2011, when he began training heavily again in preparation for the 2012 London Olympics, reports the BBC.
Would he do it again? "No," he told Yahoo. "It's too much hassle."
Oddly, Campbell isn't alone in using sex to reach The Olympics. At the 1992 games in Barcelona, Australian swimmer Toni Jeffs was partially sponsored by a strip club, and according to Fairfax NZ News, Nicole Tasker, a potential cyclist for the Sydney Olympics, raised money at a strip club in Auckland.
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