Discus thrower Veronica Fraley was able to focus on the Paris Olympics once her rent was paid after the American’s public plea for financial help led to her rescue by two surprising sources.
Hip-hop star Flavor Flav and Alexis Ohanian, the Reddit cofounder and husband of tennis great Serena Williams, split the cost of Fraley’s rent after her financial appeal.
However, their generosity could not help Fraley, who attends Vanderbilt University, reach the Olympic discus final, as she finished 13th in qualifying on Friday to miss the final by one spot.
Photo: Reuters
“I compete in the Olympic Games TOMORROW and can’t even pay my rent my school only sent about 75% of my rent while they pay football players (who haven’t won anything) enough to buy new cars and houses,” Fraley posted on X on Thursday.
The Commodores football team went 2-10 last season, while Fraley won the NCAA discus title this season, set the school record and earned a spot on Team USA at the US Olympic track trials.
The 65-year-old Flav, who also sponsors the US women’s water polo team, was quick to respond.
“I gotchu. DM me and I’ll send payment TODAY so you don’t have to worry bout it TOMORROW, and imma be rooting for ya tomorrow. LETZ GO,!!!” he wrote.
Ohanian chimed in less than 10 minutes later.
“C’mon now! I’ll split it with @flavorflav,” Ohanian wrote, and then posted less than two hours later: “Update! It is done.”
He posted again with a screenshot of a money transfer for US$7,760 to Fraley.
“Man of my word, and Imma try and come by and support you in person tomorrow. LMK what time,” Flav, the founding member of the US rap group Public Enemy, added.
Flav is in Paris as part of his duties as the official hype man for USA Water Polo — a partnership that came together after he connected with US captain Maggie Steffens on Instagram in May.
The 24-year-old Fraley’s original plea has 18 million views on X.
Ohanian is also promising to pay US$60,000 to any of the 36 athletes entered in his Athlos NYC women-only track meet on Sept. 26 if they win a gold medal in Paris. That is in addition to the US$60,000 the winners at his Athlos event would receive.
Fraley made sure to point out in a later post that her criticism wasn’t with Vanderbilt.
“Thanks for the supporting messages but I want to clarify my irritation isn’t with the school itself, mainly the rules that bar me from making the amount I’m WORTH as a collegiate athlete such as NIL which favors popularity over performance,” she wrote. “That’s all I’m sayin.”
Additional reporting by AP
The qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) is to be held at the Taipei Dome between Feb. 21 and 25, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today. Taiwan’s group also includes Spain, Nicaragua and South Africa, with two of the four teams advancing onto the 2026 WBC. Taiwan, currently ranked second in the world in the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, are favorites to come out of the group, the MLB said in an article announcing the matchups. Last year, Taiwan finished in a five-way tie in their group with two wins and two losses, but finished last on tiebreakers after giving
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
RSS