Who is Kyle Snyder? Olympic gold medalist arrested in prostitution sting
Olympic gold medalist and former pro wrestler Kyle Snyder was arrested in a prostitution sting operation. The Columbus Division of Police confirmed the news on Monday, revealing that the 29-year-old was among the 16 men charged during an undercover operation last week.
The sting launched on Friday, May 9, was aimed at reducing prostitution in the city's north side. As part of the operation, the Columbus police posted ads for online escort services, according to ABC 6. Police spokesman Sgt. Joe Albert said in a statement that detectives 'published internet escort ads to solicit others to engage in sexual activity for hire.'
Around 8:00 pm, officers began receiving 'texts and phone calls' from a man 'in response to one of the published ads,' the statement continued. 'Through a series of texts and/or phone calls, a date was set up at a nearby hotel,' it added, per the outlet.
Once the date was set up, authorities found out that the individual in question turned out to be Snyder, a former Ohio State University wrestler. After reaching the hotel, he paid an undercover officer for a sex act. However, he was arrested by other officers inside the hotel room for engaging in prostitution.
While he was released from custody at the scene, Snyder has been summoned to appear in court next Monday, May 19. However, from 2016 to 2018, he won three NCAA heavyweight championships for Ohio State and contributed to The Buckeyes' 2015 team title win.
Snyder was inducted into the university's Ohio State Athletics Hall of Fame in 2024. Before that, he scored a gold medal at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games and a silver medal at the 2021 Summer Games held in Tokyo. Additionally, he finished fourth last year at the Paris Olympics.
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When Evert started climbing the ranks — as a 14-year-old who made the semi-final of a senior event, a 15-year-old who defeated World No. 1 Margaret Court, a 16-year-old invited to the US Open, and a 19-year-old double Grand Slam champion — the world started to take note of this odd double-handed system that relied on supreme fitness and hanging back at the baseline to offer greater consistency and power. Over the next decade, while Evert and Navratilova were locked in a battle of philosophies in women's tennis, it helped the double-handed cause that Jimmy Connors burst on the men's side with a similar stroke that was encouraged by his mother Gloria Connors. And it helped that Bjorn Borg emerged with an even stranger double-handed style that had a straighter backswing, inspired by his early days as a hockey player. And so, the revolution — albeit not a pretty one — was being televised. A parting shot It took a couple of decades from the Evert-Connors era for the balance to shift. Great champions such as Sampras and Federer on the men's side and Graf and Henin on the women's side concealed the fact that change was truly upon us, until we woke up one morning in today's sports-tech-ruled world. A world in which Musetti, Dimitrov and Tsitsipas, with zero Grand Slam titles between them, are the last samurais fighting for a stroke in danger of being lost in time. A stroke that, as Navratilova said, now requires a genius to play it. But therein lies the hope that it's not all over; that someone will rise to not just celebrate the shot but also triumph with it. For what is sport without a dash of genius?
