The last time the world looked at Amanda Beard she was winning her first individual Olympic gold medal at the Athens Games.
There's a lot more of the 25-year-old swimmer on view in next month's issue of Playboy, where a topless Beard is on the cover billed as "the world's sexiest athlete nude." Inside, she takes off her clothes in eight pictures certain to create a stir among rivals and young girls who consider her a role model.
Beard is unapologetic about what she calls her latest "outside adventure." After all, she's modeled in men's magazines before, notably a spread in FHM that left little to the imagination.
PHOTO: AP
"This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and I really felt excited and motivated to do it," she said on Thursday, sipping coffee in the sunny backyard of her home in Venice, California.
"I'm kind of used to people not necessarily agreeing with everything that I do and that's totally fine. This doesn't change my personality or who I am. It's just a business decision," she said.
Beard, who previously dated NASCAR driver Carl Edwards, posed in the prime of her career. She's aiming to qualify for her fourth Olympics next year in Beijing, and is the Olympic champion and former world-record holder in the 200m breaststroke.
Beard first came to attention at the 1996 Games, where as a scrawny 14-year-old she toted her teddy bear to the starting blocks and won two silver medals. She medaled at the 2000 Games, too.
"There's a lot of debate about whether it demeans women and female athletes," said Dave Salo, Beard's coach at Trojan Swim Club. "If nothing else, it celebrates the athleticism and takes away from the model-type women."
Beard is aware of the criticism she could get from the mothers of young swimmers and girls, but says those are some of the same people who had her autograph FHM when she was in that magazine.
"I've had so many women approach me and say, `We love seeing a good, healthy body being portrayed as beauty,'" she said.
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