Photo: Clive Mason/Getty Images
There are always great stories that the world learns during the Olympics, stories that feature a lot of highs and lows. Well here’s one story that you probably didn’t hear from your local news: Melo Imai, a former snowboarder who quit the sport to do porn is ready to return to the sport.
Back in 2006, the then 18-year-old Imai said so long to her Olympic dreams when she failed at the Turin Games in the halfpipe event.
So what did Imai choose as her next career? Porn, and she flopped around with naked stranger for the next 12 years. Here’s what Imai had to say about that time in her life.
“For many athletes the Olympics is the pinnacle of their career, but for me it was a nightmare. I don’t just mean because I got injured and failed to progress. The whole experience was terrible. Leading up to the Games I had this constant fear of failure, like a choking feeling. It was the same throughout my career.”
But it looks like her career change was a profitable one, of course:
“After the Olympics, I was making as much as a company president, and sometimes I’d go party at a host club and drop $9,000 in a single night,” she said about her gig as a porn star.”
But now Imai is back as she’s retiring from porn and heading back to the slopes. Imai has already won the All Japan Snowboarding Championships so clearly she hasn’t lost a step. Although years of being extremely flexible probably helped.
“I want to return to the world of snowboarding, so I’m taking care not to get involved with things that are overly pornographic,” Imai said.
Imai is aiming to land a spot on Japan’s Winter Olympics team for 2022. And you’re aiming to see some of her work as you’re now going to Google her name like crazy.
h/t Maxim
