What does McKayla Maroney do for a living now after quitting gymnastics?

Former US artistic gymnast McKayla Maroney has had a short yet prolific international career. She was part of the American gold medal-winning team at the 2011 World Championships, where she bagged the yellow metal in her individual vault event as well.

The teenager tasted Olympic glory at the 2012 London Games by being a member of the 'Fierce Five' team, which won a gold medal in the team event.

The 'Fierce Five' team (Image courtesy: Getty)

This was accompanied by an individual silver medal in the vault event. She missed out on gold as she finished just over a 10th of a point behind Romania's Sandra Ibasa. Her disappointment was vividly seen right after receiving the silver medal where her not-so-happy face went viral and was one of the most popular memes on social media.

Post the Olympics, her injuries kept piling up. Yet, she returned to the sport and defended her World Championship title in 2013 by winning gold in the vault event with a score of 15.724. She became the first US female gymnast to defend a World Championship Vault title. However, this was the youngster's last competitive appearance in the sport.

While fans were looking forward to seeing her at the Rio Olympics, she announced her retirement in February 2016 at just 19 years of age.

Following her retirement, McKayla Maroney bravely stepped up to reveal that USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar had repeatedly molested her, starting when she was 13 years old, until her retirement from the sport in 2016. She made the allegation on Twitter under the #MeToo hashtag. While Larry is serving his sentence, Maroney along with other victims were awarded the Arthur Ashe Courage Award in 2018.

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What is McKayla Maroney doing now?

Post her retirement, Maroney has been associated with different projects. In 2020, she released her first album, 'Wake Up Call,' which was shortly followed by her second album, 'COVID- 19 Lockdown'.

The 26-year-old has also been trying her hand at acting, making guest appearances on a number of popular TV shows such as NBC’s Superstore, the Hart of Dixie, Superstore, Up in the air, and Bones.

Maroney currently has over 1.4m followers on Instagram and has also started a wellness, beauty and mental health page called Glowy.

In addition, McKayla Maroney recently announced that she is writing a book to tell her story and highlight her gymnastics career. On May 18, 2021, Maroney wrote on Twitter that "It felt too hard to write about before, but I'm ready now."