Apolo Ohno is widely known as the face of short track speed skating, and next to Shaun White, he’s arguably one of the biggest names among other American winter Olympians. He was an incredibly popular athlete and public figure between 2002 and 2010, but since his informal retirement following the 2010 Winter Olympics, he has sort of fallen off of the map, so to speak. Surely he hasn’t ended his entire career already, right? In this article, I’ll talk about Apolo Ohno’s rise to prominence in Olympic history, and I’ll also provide a brief update as to what he has been up to in 2016. Let’s take a closer look into the life of this speed skating legend.
Apolo Ohno’s Early Life and Career
His father did everything that he could to support his son’s athletic pursuits, and when Apolo was just 13 years old he was admitted into the Lake Placid Olympic Training Center. This would allow him to focus his full attentions on training as a short track skater. (Apolo was the youngest skater to have ever been admitted to the center at the time.) With this, Ohno began his journey to Olympic fame. This journey was definitely a harsh one. His training was successful at first, and when he was 14 years old he was able to relocate to the Colorado Springs Olympic Training Center to train with senior level skaters, despite the fact that he was meant to be practicing with junior level ones. Ohno trained hard, but he had a miserable showing at the 1997 World Championships, which ultimately resulted in him not making the Olympic team for the 1998 Winter Olympics. This was a devastating blow, but the teenage athlete shifted his focus to making the 2002 Olympic team instead.
Ohno returned to his training at Lake Placid, and put a tremendous amount of effort into getting in good shape for the 1999 World Championships. He placed first in the 1999 World Junior Championships, and he would go on to place fourth in the 1999 World Championships. In the 2000 World Championships, his performance slipped a little bit, but a successful 2000 – 2001 season succeeded in placing the young man at the forefront of the American speed skating scene. (This season was anchored by a World Cup title, as well as a National title.) In December of 2001, Apolo has successfully earned himself a spot in the six-man men’s short track skating team. With this tremendous victory under his belt, Ohno entered center stage stepping into the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Apolo Ohno’s Olympic Debut and Onward
Following his Olympic debut, Apolo made sure to keep himself in top-of-the-line shape. He maintained dominance in the World Cup and in the World Championships, which put him in a very good position to re-enter the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. His performance was disappointing in some ways, taking home bronze in the 1000 m and in the 5000 m relay. However, he was still able to bring home a gold medal in the 500 m. By this point, Apolo Ohno had established himself as a great American athlete, and he had brought inline speed skating (a relatively obscure sport in the United States) to the forefront of the Winter Olympics. Following the 2006 games, Ohno took a brief hiatus before re-entering the sport in 2007. He maintained a dominant off-season in order to put himself in a prime position for the 2010 games. Apolo put a lot of emphasis on weight loss during his training, wanting to be more physically fit than his competitors.
What’s Apolo Ohno Doing Now in 2018 – Recent Updates

Although Apolo Ohno has obviously shifted away from athletics, he’s still very much in the limelight. Since his time in the Olympics, he has worked a lot in entertainment. In 2013, he appeared as the host of GSN’s reboot of Minute to Win It. Most recently, earlier this year he made an appearance as a guest star on Jane Lynch’s Hollywood Game Night. Apolo has also used his platform as a well-known Olympics athlete to work as a motivational speaker and as an activist. Ohno is known as the founder of Allysian Sciences, a motivational speaking platform that helps its users to build their business and community, through use of cognitive training and dietary supplements. He may not be on the ice anymore, but I don’t think that anyone can say that Apolo Ohno has allowed his career to stagnate since his 2013 retirement.
Weird, heard of this guy when he was sponsored by Subway but I didn’t even know he was a speed skater