Shock: U.S. Olympian Admits to Living Double-Life as $600-an-Hour Las Vegas Escort

Suzy Favor Hamilton, who has won nine NCAA titles and participated in three Olympics, has reportedly admitted to working as a call girl in last Vegas and elsewhere throughout the U.S. since last December. (AP)

Three-time U.S. Olympian runner Suzy Favor Hamilton has admitted leading a double life as a $600-an-hour escort. She apologized Thursday for the "huge mistake" after a report by The Smoking Gun website said she had been working as a prostitute in Las Vegas.

The 44-year-old Favor Hamilton lives in Madison, Wis. The Smoking Gun reports she has been working for the last year for an escort service known as the Haley Heston firm.

Soon after the story appeared online, Hamilton released a series of tweets saying in part that she was "drawn to escorting in large part because it provided many coping mechanisms for me when I was going through a very challenging time with my marriage and my life."

A middle-distance runner, Favor Hamilton competed for the U.S. at the Olympics in 1992, 1996 and 2000 but did not win a medal. She won seven U.S. national titles.

The Smoking Gun continues:

While Favor Hamilton...has used an alias, “Kelly Lundy,” when working as an escort, she inexplicably shared her true identity with several male clients, believing that her secret was somehow safe with strangers who paid for her company by leaving envelopes stuffed with cash on bathroom vanities in swanky hotels.

When approached by a reporter earlier this month in the lobby of a Las Vegas hotel, Favor Hamilton initially denied any connection with the escort service, Haley Heston’s Private Collection. But Favor Hamilton--who is married to her college sweetheart, a lawyer, and is the mother of a seven-year-old girl--eventually acknowledged her work as “Kelly.”

“I take full responsibility for my mistakes. I’m not the victim and I’m not going that route,” Favor Hamilton said. “I’m owning up to what I did. I would not blame anybody except myself.” She added, “Everybody in this world makes mistakes. I made a huge mistake. Huge.”

Favor Hamilton expressed concern that her story would be “sensationalized” by a reporter. It is hard, though, to imagine how that could occur. The actual events of the ex-Olympian's past year already seem like the fever dreams of a Lifetime producer who decided to adapt Luis Bunuel’s “Belle de Jour” for basic cable.

Favor Hamilton called the escort business "exciting" and reportedly got a reprieve from her routine lifestyle by living the secret life. She said her husband, Mark, 44, was aware of her escort job but he "wasn't supportive of this at all."

"The couple lives in a $600,000 Madison home and appears to be in no financial distress based on a review of court and municipal records," The Smoking Gun reports.

The Smoking Gun provides some of Favor Hamilton's profile photos from her days as an escort:

Source: The Smoking Gun

Source: The Smoking Gun

Source: The Smoking Gun

Source: The Smoking Gun

Many of the additional photos of Favor Hamilton posted on The Smoking Gun are more sexually suggestive and explicit.

Talking about the client that she suspects outed her to a reporter, Favor Hamilton said, “He totally broke all the rules by outing me.” But she doesn't plan on dragging the client's name through the mud like she says he did to her.

“I don’t want to be like him. Because he is scum. And I will not become scum to make myself feel good,” she added. "I will not do it. I would suffer rather than go that route of being vindictive.”

Oblivious to the potential legal ramifications of her escort work, Favor Hamilton went on "dates" in Las Vegas and other cities where prostitution is illegal. The "dates" were arranged by the escort company, which describes itself as "the premier Boutique Escort Agency of Las Vegas.”

"I realize I have made highly irrational choices and I take full responsibility for them. I am not a victim here and knew what I was doing," Favor Hamilton wrote Thursday via her official Twitter account.

"I have been seeking the help of a psychologist for the past few weeks and will continue to do so after I have put things together," she added.

To read The Smoking Gun's full report, click here.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.