A British athlete won an Olympic gold medal by eating more food and exercising less to gain 22 pounds.
On Thursday, Ellie Aldridge, 27, competed in kitefoiling, a new Olympic sport that favors heavier athletes.
Kitefoiling, also known as Formula Kite, is similar to windsurfing. Athletes race on boards that feature hydrofoils and hand-control foil kites that pick up wind, enabling athletes to travel at speeds of over 50mph across the water.
Bigger kitefoilers have an edge because they can hold down larger, heavier kites and so go faster.
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Aldridge, who is 5ft 8, weighed about 60kg when she started kitefoiling in 2018, making her one of the sport’s smaller riders, The Telegraph reported on Thursday. Former world champion Lauriane Nolot, for instance, weighed 74kg when she came second to Aldridge, according to her sponsor’s website.
Over the past few years, Aldridge increased her body weight to 70kg because, as she told the British Sailing Team in 2023: “If you have to be heavier to win, then so be it.”
Owing to the stigma around weight gain, it may seem counterintuitive that Olympians, at the peak of human performance, should put on weight to be successful. But kitesurfing isn’t the only sport where athletes gain weight to be more competitive.
CrossFit athlete Harry Lightfoot, for example, recently told Business Insider he eats 5,000 calories a day to maintain his title of UK’s Fittest Man for 2024; bodybuilders often “bulk” in the winter months; and sumo wrestlers famously make themselves as heavy, and therefore as hard to tip over, as possible.
Gender stereotypes can make weight gain particularly challenging for female athletes. CrossFit legend Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr told BI in 2020 that she had a “lot of trouble embracing my body when I first started developing muscle.”
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Aldridge ate a lot and avoided cardio to gain weight
“I’ve pretty much had to change the way I live and had to become obsessed with getting in enough food,” she told The Telegraph.
When she first started kitefoiling, Aldridge consumed a lot of beer and ice cream, she wrote on Instagram earlier this year. But she changed to having lots protein shakes and followed a diet designed to help her build lean muscle, The Telegraph reported.
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Exercise has a smaller effect on weight than many people think. But Aldridge also stopped doing cardio exercises that could burn unnecessary calories, meaning she had to give up running, cycling, and climbing, which she loves. She even had to stop swimming back to shore after training, she wrote on Instagram.
“I’ve always been an athlete and physically very active. To suddenly be told I’m not allowed to do any cardio, it’s really tricky,” she told the British Sailing Team in 2023.
Aldridge told The Telegraph didn’t enjoy the process of gaining weight: “It’s definitely the bit I don’t like about the sport and one of the reasons I don’t think it will be very sustainable.”
Following her gold medal win, she told the outlet: “I can’t wait to not have to eat food now.”
“I’ll definitely aim to do another Olympic campaign,” she said, “but I can’t live my life forever not doing cardio and being on weight gain. It’s not really the way I want to live my life.”
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