20-year-old millionaire gymnast named most influential athlete

A 20-year-old college gymnast has been named the world's most influential female college athlete. 

Olivia Dunne, who is also a social media sensation, was the highest-ranked female athlete in On3 Sports’ NIL valuations list, which ranked athletes by taking into account the individual’s name, image and likeness. A metric is also used which measures college athletes’ ability to profit off themselves. 

Dunne was valued at $2.3 million, a cool $800,000 more than the second-placed athlete, who is fellow gymnast, Sunisa Lee, who won. a gold medal in the Tokyo Olympics.

This came as a result of her meteoric rise online in the last few years.

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She has 2.2 million followers on Instagram which is the most of any female National Collegiate Athletic Association athlete. On TikTok, she has racked up 6.6 million followers, and that figure is rising all the time. 

Her posts are valued around $31,000 each. 

Due to a range of different lucrative sponsorship deals, she became a millionaire at just 18 years old. Thanks to the fact that the NCAA relaxed rules on students making money from their image rights, Dunne was able to maximise her earnings. 

Dunne recently spoke about the rules change, she said: "Before college, my coach and I would design my own custom leotards for all my major competitions. I love expressing myself through my style.

"Social media is always something that I've loved, and what I think is so great about the NIL rule change is that you can do whatever you love and make money off of it."

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Dunne started in gymnastics when she was just three, after years of competitions she made her elite debut back in 2014 and ended up joining the US gymnastics team in 2017. 

In 2020, Dunne walked away from elite gymnastics to compete at the college level at Louisiana State University.