Legend, the Gladiators star, has described how an eating condition altered the direction of his life.
The 38-year-old fitness instructor and former triple jumper was attempting to represent Great Britain at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, but he struggled with an eating cycle while pursuing his aspirations.
He now appears as a Gladiator on the BBC’s reincarnation of the popular 1990s show and has overcome his eating condition, which kept him caught in a cycle of hunger and bingeing that impeded his training.
He would starve himself in the days leading up to a tournament in order to match the size of his competitors, only to compensate by binge eating.
‘I would put away 10,000 calories a day over those weekends,’ he told the Mirror about the moments after a competition had finished.
‘Sometimes I felt so full, I could hardly move and would lie on my bed feeling like I was going to vomit.
‘I remember thinking it was weird at the time but I felt powerless to stop it.’
Legend, whose actual name is Matt Morsia, has stated that young athletes require more help to prevent others from adopting such excessive eating habits.
Writing in his 2020 book The 24/7 Body, he said: ‘There’s a total lack of support for young people in a lot of sports, many of which encourage – if not actively then implicitly some kind of starvation or significant restriction of diet and I certainly fell into this trap.’
A back injury ruined his Olympic hopes, but he transitioned to powerlifting and won silver at the 2016 European Championships.
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Now exciting Gladiators spectators, he intimated that he is head and shoulders above his competitors.
‘I’ve been training like a beast for the show but realistically I didn’t need to,’ he quipped. ‘I could’ve spent the last two months eating doughnuts and playing Dungeons & Dragons and I’d still be better than everyone else.
‘I’m called Legend for a reason! I can only apologise for the irreparable damage I’m about to do to the contenders. Actually, that’s a lie, I’m not sorry at all. I’m actively looking forward to it.’
