How Olivia Dunne turned the male gaze into a gymnastics empire

Gymnastics asks its most promising athletes to give everything. Now the LSU star is repurposing herself into the lucrative main event

Olivia Dunne is not the most talented gymnast out there, nor is she the most iconic representative of her sport. But if you were to review the library of slow motion videos Dunne posts on TikTok, especially those featuring her performing backflips and handsprings on the beach (beachnastics," she calls it), you'd probably understand why the 20-year-old New Jersey native is, by certain metrics anyway, the biggest thing going in American gymnastics.

Dunne has an Instagram following of 3.7m, more than Derek Jeter, Cher or the reigning all-round Olympic gymnastic champion, Sunisa Lee. On TikTok, 7.2m accounts follow Dunne - millions more than Beyonce. Some of the pictures and videos involve gymnastics. But Dunne, who has long blond hair, a heart-shaped face and kewpie doll features, has mastered the art of posting sports-agnostic selfies that send her fans into a tizzy. Occasionally she wears a leotard, but mostly she dons croptops, minidresses, angel wings.