'Girl Dads' Flavor Flav & Alexis Ohanian Unite To Pay A Struggling Female Olympian's Rent For A Year
Olympic spirit in true form!
ev radin | Shutterstock | Jupiterimages | ilonarepkina | Canva An Olympic track runner for Team USA was not quite as pumped as the other athletes, mainly because of financial struggles that kept her head out of the game, so to speak.
One well-known rapper teamed up with a prestigious entrepreneur to lend a helping hand so that all the effort she put in to secure a spot on the 2024 Olympic team wasn't in vain.
Rapper Flavor Flav and entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian teamed up to cover Olympic track runner Veronica Fraley’s rent for an entire year.
Fraley, a 24-year-old Olympic track and field athlete who competes in discus throw, was finding it difficult to get excited about the fact she would be competing in the 2024 Olympics due to her financial struggles.
On August 1, she wrote on X, “I compete in the Olympic Games TOMORROW and can’t even pay my rent.”
Fraley blamed Vanderbilt University, where she graduated with All-American honors and won 15th place in the 2023 World Championships, for her inability to pay her 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’s frustrations did not go unnoticed, however. American rapper and Olympic enthusiast Flavor Flav took it upon himself to reach out to Fraley on X and offer to cover her rent.
“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.
Fraley did not hesitate to accept Flavor Flav's kind gesture.
Much to Fraley's delight, Flavor Flav was not the only one who wanted to chip in. Alexis Ohanian, co-founder and former chairman of the social media giant Reddit, wanted to lend a hand as well.
“C’mon now! I’ll split it with @flavorfav” he replied in an X post.
Shortly after, Ohanian shared a screenshot from his Venmo account showing the payment to Fraley titled, “MURICA’” along with a gold medal and American flag emoji.
Word spread quickly, and soon Fraley earned enough to cover her rent for an entire year!
She shared that, with the help of the two influential figures and generous internet strangers, she was already able to pay her rent this month without any worries about the future.
With all of the new attention she is receiving, she wanted to clarify that she does not blame her school itself for previously struggling to pay rent.
“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 [Name, Image and Likeness] which favors popularity over performance,” she revealed in a follow-up post.
She urged her supporters to wish her luck in the Olympic games, where she will hopefully be able to put all of her focus into her performance rather than worrying about the looming threat of potentially being homeless.
Ohanian and Flavor Flav are both girl dads and likely felt especially sympathetic to Fraley's unfair circumstances.
Ohanian is not only married to former Olympian and tennis superstar, Serena Williams, but he is also a father of two daughters, 6-year-old Olympia and 11-month-old Adira River. Flavor Flav has 8 children, 4 of them daughters — Dazyna, Karren, Quanan, and Kayla.
As fathers of girls, the two men likely saw Fraley’s struggles and imagined their own daughters being in a similar situation. They were inspired by Fraley's determination and knew they would do anything to help her.
And now you can too! Fraley has since launched a GoFundMe page to help finance her track and field journey and she has already raised over $19,000.
We don’t have to travel all the way to the games, buy front-row tickets, hold up signs, and cheer for our American athletes to support them. Sometimes, the best support is recognizing that just because someone gets the opportunity to compete in the Olympics does not mean they don't share the same struggles as the rest of us.
This is especially true for female athletes, who are notoriously underappreciated and underpaid.
So good luck to Fraley and the rest of the female athletes who put in twice as much hard work and grit and get half the recognition. You're more inspiring than you realize.
Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.