350-Pound Olympic Weightlifter Holley Mangold Gets Pre-London Makeover

Olympic darling Holley Mangold can lift between 300 and 500 pounds above her shoulders, according to the New York Times, but considers plucking her eyebrows "awful."

The New York Times explains:

When you’re a big, strong girl — a really big, strong girl — it’s easier to pull the table to your chair than to scoot your chair toward the table. Doorknobs need to be tightened, or you might pull them off. Holley Mangold, 22 and a superheavyweight Olympic weight lifter, is 5-foot-8 and weighs 350 pounds. When she squats, which she can do with 525 pounds on her shoulders, she looks almost wholly like an egg. “I get a lot of Creepy McCreepersons interested in me because I’m so big it’s not normal, it’s like a fetish,” she [said] one day in the gym. “And I don’t like to sit outside. Not because I don’t like to be outside, but usually there are plastic chairs. Once you break a couple plastic chairs, you’re afraid of them all.”

[...]

“What do you think of my makeup, good or whorish?” Mangold asked [her friend, lifting partner, and agent Drew Dillon] one late afternoon this spring when they met at the Y to lift. Mangold was trying to perfect what she called her “professional makeup look” in advance of London. Dillon shrugged...

Now, the sister of the New York Jets' Nick Mangold is getting professional assistance to prepare for the upcoming Olympic games in London.

“I feel like women weightlifters try to be too feminine just to show that they’re still feminine,” Mangold cautioned. “I don’t do that. I try to have a nice balance."

She added: “I don’t want to be small,” she said. “That would be awful. Nobody remembers the skinny girl’s name.”

Watch the transformation, via The Daily:

The athlete seemed pleased with the results in the subsequent photo shoot.

"They look really beautiful...they're coming out really nice," the photographer said of the photos.

Jokingly shaking her head, Mangold said: "Well, that's [because] I'm in the picture."

But in the end, her mind is still on the competition.

"I think what I'm looking forward to the most is having the opportunity to represent my country.  It's the ultimate test of what you can do.  I'm just really excited to go out there with the red, white, and blue and represent my country the best way I know how."

Here are some more photos of Mangold and her accomplishments: