The Stunning Transformation Of Gymnast Olivia Dunne

The following article contains references to sexual assault.

On June 30, 2021, the National Collegiate Athletic Association announced its historical decision to overturn a 115-year prohibition on students earning profit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL). "This is an important day for college athletes since they all are now able to take advantage of name, image, and likeness opportunities," NCAA President Mark Emmert explained in a statement. "With the variety of state laws adopted across the country, we will continue to work with Congress to develop a solution that will provide clarity on a national level." For many college athletes, it was an exciting moment — but for gymnast Olivia Dunne, this was more than just a statement.

"That was the moment my life changed forever," Dunne told Elle in an interview. "That was surreal," she said. "I didn't really know what was to come, but I knew it was going to be special." At the time, Dunne was already the most-followed college athlete on social media, so the chance to monetize that success would be monumental for the gymnast. Soon, she was able to snag endorsement deals, which allowed her to rake in millions of dollars per year. 

But before Olivia "Livvy" Dunne was a beloved social media star and millionaire, she was just a regular girl growing up in a New Jersey ranch with her family, unbeknownst to herself that she would forever change the game for women student athletes everywhere.

Olivia Dunne was raised in Hillsdale, New Jersey. Dunne's mother is a former gymnast, and her father had played college football at Rutgers University. When Dunne was 3, she noticed that her older cousin, Isabella, had something she knew she needed: a pink, sparkly leotard. "I was like, 'Mom, I want that,'" Dunne told Elle. "And she said, 'Well, you can't have a leotard unless you do gymnastics.' So I was like, 'Sign me up.'"

Dunne remembers the strength she had at a very young age; she was quickly able to hold herself up on the men's rings at a Hillsdale gym with no trouble at all. By the time she was 6, she was taking classes at ENA Gymnastics in Paramus, New Jersey, where her coaches noticed her natural talent. "She's very strong, but she is very smart about what she does and she learns very fast," coach Craig Zappa told NorthJersey.com when Dunne was 12. "Most skills that take a lot of kids a couple of months sometimes she can just pick it up in two days or one practice and just move it through."

Gymnastics training is divided into levels, ranging from 1 through 10 — with 1 being the easiest and 10 being the most difficult. Dunne began as a level 4 at ENA when she was 6, but Zappa almost immediately bumped her training up to a level 10. From there, she won several state championships and skipped several levels, putting her at a competition level 10 by the time she was 10.

By the time Olivia Dunne reached seventh grade, her mother, Kat Dunne, opted to homeschool her so she could put most of her efforts into training. During her homeschooling, Kat made sure to teach Olivia the importance of using social media to her advantage. 

"My kids all grew up with technology in their hands, and I've always been a big advocate of putting technology in the hands of kids and teaching them how to use it safely," Kat explained to Elle. "If you're going to have your phone in your hand, don't just scroll through — let's make content, let's do something. So many parents treat technology in the opposite way. They think of it as just, 'You're wasting your time.' But if that's what your child is interested in, then what can it become?"

Aside from wanting more time to train, the decision to homeschool Dunne likely also came from the fact that from a young age, everyone knew she would be able to hand-pick any college she wanted to attend. However, this choice came with a price. Dunne admitted to getting lonely and feeling as if she was missing out by not attending public school. To combat these feelings, she would go to football games at her former school and catch up with friends she hadn't seen during the week. When kids would ask how her training was going, it made her feel special and reminded her why she was doing what she does. "Not a lot of people get to do this," Dunne told the Pascack Valley Daily Voice in 2016. "I try to cherish every moment."

When a gymnast reaches level 10, they have the choice to stay at that level and possibly receive college scholarships, or they can opt to aim for the elite level. In order to qualify for elite, the gymnast must score 51.5 or better, which takes an incredible amount of practice and dedication to achieve. For Olivia Dunne, there was no question which option she was going to choose. "I knew I was going to make it," she confessed to NorthJersey.com. "I had confidence in myself." And she was right. In May 2014, at 12 years old, Dunne scored 52.75, which boosted her up to a junior international elite level and made her the youngest elite competitor in the United States at the time.

After achieving elite status, she made her first competitive debut at the American Classic in Huntsville, Texas, in July 2014. Although she placed 28th in the competition, Dunne was competing at a difficult level with girls much older than her and was able to show off the major potential and talent that she had. Around this time, she was becoming more invested in social media, which she admitted to being on "morning, afternoon, and night." "There were younger girls looking up to me and people starting to recognize me," she told Elle years later. "To be someone else's role model meant the world to me."

Naturally, Dunne began posting her new gymnastics skills, tricks, and training practices. "Livvy was so cute with it," ENA coach Jen Zappa shared with Elle. "She would work so hard to master a skill, and then she would want to get the perfect version on camera."

In 2017, Olivia Dunne made the USA Gymnastics Women's Junior National Team — but competing at that level also meant training at the Karolyi Ranch in rural Huntsville, Texas. The 2,000-acre center was created for training the top female gymnasts in the United States. During the ranch's time as the U.S. Women's National Team Training Center and a U.S. Olympic Training Site, there was much more going on beneath the surface than just a "fun summer camp" — which Dunne admitted to initially thinking it was in Elle.

In 2018, gymnasts began stepping up and speaking out publicly against Larry Nassar, the team doctor at the ranch. Many reported they had been sexually abused by Nassar, and that these occurrences had been going on for years within the grounds of the training center. Nassar claimed his actions were for medical reasons, and journalists reported that Bela and Martha Karolyi knew what was going on but chose to do nothing. Moreover, the Karolyis themselves allegedly inflicted verbal and emotional abuse and fear tactics on the gymnasts.

Dunne recalls her years at Karolyi Ranch as "abusive," but she knew that going there was the only way to achieve her dreams. The Nassar investigation was an emotional time for everyone involved in gymnastics. Nassar was sentenced to life in prison, and the ranch was permanently closed.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

In spring 2017, Olivia Dunne accepted a full athletic scholarship to Louisiana State University (LSU) with the intention of beginning college in 2020. That year, she also won three medals at the U.S. Classic in Chicago, along with additional medals at the P&G Championships in California, and made her senior debut in 2018 in Jesolo, Italy. In an exclusive interview with FloGymnastics, Dunne explained how pleased she was with her overall experience in Italy. "I went with a bunch of my friends, I made my routines, and I was really happy about that," she said.

Shortly after she got back, Dunne suffered an ankle injury. She took most of 2019 off to recover, but that didn't stop her from pushing forward. "As long as I'm training my hardest," she told the outlet, "I know I'll compete my best." Dunne signed her National Letter of Intent to LSU for gymnastics on a full athletic scholarship in the fall of 2019. In sports, student-athletes sign an NLI as a binding agreement that will provide them with financial aid in exchange for committing themselves to that school for at least a year.

For Dunne, beginning college was a major step as one of her goals was to amplify the presence of college sports. "As a female athlete, I hope I can bring attention to how amazing college sports are and how hard college athletics are," she told Sports Illustrated. "In gymnastics, a lot of people only watch the Olympics every four years, and I feel like I've been able to use my platform to bring an audience to college gymnastics, and people are starting to see how amazing all these gymnasts are."

Olivia Dunne joined TikTok in 2019 initially posting gymnastic clips, dance videos, and viral trends. While her content steadily racked up thousands of views, it wasn't until a family vacation in Florida in March 2020 that her social media presence began to take off. Occurring amid the COVID-19 lockdowns, the Dunne family found themselves stuck on its beaches, so the gymnast figured she should try and make the most of her time there — after all, there are far worse places to be during a lockdown. She began posting simple TikToks of herself demonstrating various gymnastics moves on the beach, and soon started calling the series "beach-nastics."

The videos garnered millions of views and thousands of comments praising Dunne's talent and beauty. In a very short amount of time, her TikTok audience grew, gaining hundreds of thousands of new followers each week. "My videos started to get shown, which was so cool," Dunne said in an interview with LSU Tiger TV. "And I would make videos mostly about gymnastics at first, and then people, I realized people liked to see more of, like, my life and what I do."

By late summer 2021, Olivia Dunne became the most-followed college athlete in the world and has since accumulated over 13 million followers between TikTok and Instagram. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to profit from this right off the bat due to NCAA restrictions.

Thanks to all of her endorsement deals, Olivia Dunne was the highest-paid NCAA female athlete, bringing in seven figures each year. Dunne and gymnast Sunisa Lee were the only two women to make the list of the top 10 highest-paid NCAA athletes, but Dunne hopes it doesn't stay that way for long. "Opportunities for men and women in NCAA sports should be equal. But a lot of the NIL collectives only go to men's athletics," she told People. "I want to show you can do whatever you love — whether it's gymnastics or music or painting — and capitalize on it and create your own business."

Dunne had more to say on the topic to Sports Illustrated. "I want to continue to elevate women's sports as a whole because they really deserve the same publicity as the men's," Dunne told the outlet. "We do equal work, we put in equal time in our facilities every day and in school, so I feel like it would be right for this to be equal."

When Olivia Dunne wasn't working behind the scenes of an endorsement deal, she was focused on school and training during the day, while still a student at LSU, and her social media content in the evenings. With the help of her older sister Julz Dunne (also an LSU student at the time), the pair put their heads together to come up with content and editing ideas for videos. Dunne lived in an apartment with friends on the LSU campus, where she completed her courses online due to the massive success of her gymnastics career — as she soon realized, the positive attention can go hand in hand with the negative.

In an interview with Today, Dunne called one incident involving a crowd of male fans "insane." At a gymnastics meet that she was supposed to attend, dozens of men gathered around the outside of the building, chanting "We want Livvy," when they noticed she was not competing that day because of an injury. Inside the building, fans held up signs of support as well as life-size cardboard cutouts of her image.

"It's not a girl's responsibility how a man looks at her or how he acts," she said at the time to Elle in regard to all of the attention from male fans. "Especially when you're doing your sport and that's your uniform. I can't help the way I look. It's hard to handle at times, definitely, because I am just a 20-year-old student. I think people do forget that." Dunne graduated in December 2024.

Considering how hard Olivia Dunne worked for her skill set and, in turn, her popularity for these talents, the NCAA prohibition of student athletes earning profit from their names was arguably unfair. But it wasn't just Dunne, her family, and fans who took notice of this — student athletes across the country were only being compensated with education-related benefits like free laptops and post-graduation internships, so they felt it was time to fight back. Students took their issue to court, arguing that these restrictions violated federal antitrust laws by not allowing college athletes to receive adequate compensation for their labor.

Finally, in June 2021, the courts ruled unanimously in favor of student athletes, lifting the ban on using their name, image, and likeness for profit. For male athletes, this was an exciting feat, but for women athletes like Dunne, it was life-changing. "With gymnastics, you peak when you're about 15 years old," she told People. "After college, there's nothing really for gymnasts. There's so many professional leagues for men's sports after college, but there's such a small time frame for women to capitalize."

As soon as the restrictions lifted, WME Sports, a talent agency with clients like Venus and Serena Williams, announced on Twitter, now known as X, that it had signed on Dunne as its first-ever NIL athlete. After this, waves of companies — such as Forever 21, Grubhub, and Too Faced Cosmetics — reached out to Dunne for paid endorsement deals.

It's not typical for a college athlete to feud with a major publication, but Olivia Dunne was never your average college athlete. During her time at LSU, The New York Times approached Dunne with the goal of interviewing her about her NIL opportunities. Dunne initially accepted. However, what came next for the gymnast was a total surprise.

Speaking on the "What's Your Story?" podcast after the fact, Dunne shared, "So, they came to our gymnastics facility at LSU, took pictures of me. They said, 'Wear your team-issued attire, put on a leotard,' and they took a picture of me standing in front of the beam, like any gymnast would, and then they blew it up on the screen and put the headline, 'Sex Sells.'"

Dunne decided to speak out against the headline. In the same podcast interview, the gymnast described her decision to strike back via her Instagram stories. "And I decided I'm gonna put that same picture that they posted and caption 'Sex Sells.' I'm gonna put it on my Instagram Story and write '@ New York Times, is this too much?'" she shared. After calling out the publication, Dunne received a wave of support on social media. Her post gained so much traction that Sports Illustrated reached out and proposed a photoshoot. Dunne accepted. "People loved that," she said of her social media clap back. "They were like, 'This is so great.'"

Gymnast Olivia Dunne may be known for securing several lucrative sponsorships, but many other college athletes have struggled to follow suit. Female athletes, in particular, have not received their due in the business world. A 2024 report in Forbes found that, at some universities, as many as 98% of NIL (name, image, and likeness) deals go to men's sports. This is something that Dunne has hoped to change. In July 2023, during her time at LSU, the gymnast started a program to support young women athletes in their quest for sponsorships. "I started a fund at LSU called the Livvy Fund," she told USA Today Sports in 2025. "And it's to help provide NIL deals for female athletes."

Moving forward, Dunne hopes she will be remembered for encouraging other young women to monetize their talents. "I think that's part of my legacy as a college athlete at LSU," she added. "I would love to keep providing NIL deals and help educating women on, you know, working with brands and getting those deals because it's definitely more difficult as a female athlete to get NIL." Noting the discrepancy between the financial opportunities available to male and female athletes, Dunne said her goal was to help empower women. According to the gymnast, NIL is key to allowing athletes to "be bosses of their own life."

Olivia Dunne met Paul Skenes when they were both students at LSU. But while she was busy pursuing gymnastics, Skenes was more focused on baseball. He was so good that his college athletics career would be followed by a career with the Pittsburgh Pirates. However, when Dunne and Skenes first crossed paths, she didn't know enough about him to understand his full athletic potential. In fact, it was tricky for her to learn anything about Skenes at all.

Because both Dunne and Skenes were D1 college athletes, it was impossible for them to connect at first. They were like star-crossed lovers, perpetually separated by their intense training schedules. Commenting on this dynamic in a 2025 interview with GQ, Dunne shared, "I could never actually watch him do his thing because every Friday that he would start, we were competing." As for social media, Dunne couldn't reach Skenes there either. "He wouldn't follow me back on Instagram," she recalled. Ouch! She got her payback though with this painfully awkward moment when Olivia Dunne rejected Paul Skenes on live TV.

All these barriers made Olivia Dunne and Paul Skenes' relationship complicated at first — and we're not even getting to the hurdle that is Olivia Dunne's friendship with Travis Kelce. However, the gymnast and Skenes eventually managed to connect. While the couple have certainly made waves on social media, they try to keep their personal life, well, personal. As Dunne told People, "I've definitely learned over the past few years that, this past year mostly, that keeping certain things private is okay."

During the 2024/25 school year, the rules surrounding college gymnastics scoring changed, and Olivia Dunne didn't like it one bit. While a perfect 10 had once been a rare yet obtainable score, it became almost impossible to achieve. As noted by The Guardian, performances that would have previously earned a score of 9.9 were downgraded to a 9.8. Although this small shift in the scoring system might not seem like a huge deal to outsiders, Dunne felt it could decrease the popularity of the sport. The reason? Fewer perfect 10s inevitably mean less crowd engagement and less overall interest in the sport.

Blasting the new scoring system in a post on X, Dunne wrote, "I am sitting here watching NCAA gymnastics and the empty seats are concerning. I care deeply about the growth in women's sports especially in the NCAA." She went on to add, "If you want fans to enjoy the sport and increase viewership, you have to look at what makes the crowds go crazy! People understand what a perfect 10 is and want people who do things that look great to be rewarded." In other words, she wanted gymnastics fans to be able to enjoy that same rush of excitement that football fans experience when their team scores a touchdown. According to her view, removing that sense of euphoria could threaten the sport moving forward.

In April 2025, Olivia Dunne announced her retirement from gymnastics. In a video that she shared on X, Dunne expressed a profound sense of gratitude to the sport. "Time flies when you're having fun. ... That's exactly how the past 20 years in this sport have felt," she said in a voiceover that played over a montage of career highlights. Dunne went on to declare her never-ending passion for gymnastics. "Gymnastics, you have filled my heart and will always be a part of me. You've shaped me into the person I am today, creating memories and sisterhoods that will last a lifetime beyond the sport. You are my first love," she gushed.

As much as Dunne clearly enjoyed her time as a college gymnast, she seems to have embraced the next phase of her life. Speaking about her future with USA Today Sports, Dunne shared, "I think the transition from being a D1 athlete — any sport — to no longer doing your passion, I think that is a very hard transition. But for me, luckily, I had a lot of obligations outside of gymnastics [to occupy my focus]." She then cited a brand deal with Invisalign as an exciting new opportunity. That being said, Dunne said she couldn't help but miss her teammates at LSU, stating, "It was so much fun. It was like a sisterhood. And I think those girls will be my sisters for pretty much the rest of my life."

It's hardly a secret that Olivia Dunne's style choices have evolved over time. Although the gymnast grew up wearing sportswear and leotards, she eventually developed a taste for fashion, including a "Game of Thrones" style dress that really turned heads. Naturally, some of Olivia Dunne's outfits have even caused a stir, but the gymnast has held firm against critics. 

The former college athlete hopes to carry her interest in clothing into the future, especially after she had a great experience posing for the cover of Sports Illustrated. "Didn't know I was shooting for a cover," she later told USA Today Sports. "They hadn't told me. So, I was just doing a normal shoot ... And, yeah, it was really fun. I love working with Sports Illustrated. They make me feel confident."

That initial photoshoot quickly opened doors to other types of opportunities, and Dunne soon became a Sports Illustrated runway model — a role she totally rocked. During one show, the gymnast surprised the audience by doing the splits right there on the runway. While the move may not have been part of a typical fashion show, Dunne was able to shake things up on the catwalk in a really big way. She also managed to establish herself as a fresh new face in the fashion industry, and a force to be reckoned with in the future.