McKayla Maroney is making a life for herself after achieving the wrong sort of Olympic fame

MCKAYLA Maroney became an instant internet hit during the 2012 Olympics when she pulled ‘that’ face as she got her medal.

U.S. silver medallist gymnast McKayla Maroney seemed less than thrilled during the podium ceremony for the artistic gymnastics women's vault finals at the 2012 Summer Olympic

THIS famous face won’t be back at the Olympics.

Gymnast McKayla Maroney became an instant internet hit during the 2012 Olympics when she was, er, not impressed during the medal presentation for the vaulting competition after she fell during her second attempt and had to settle for the silver. The 20-year-old recently announced her retirement from the sport and is now attempting to transition to a singing career.

“For the last year, I was just figuring out my sound,” Maroney, who cited Drake as her biggest inspiration, said in an interview with Seventeen.

“I’ve loved writing songs since I was really young. I thought I was going to be like Sia and sell my songs to people. But after they were done, I was like, ‘I’m not going to sell these to anybody! I want to sing them.’ I have some demos done and I’m going to be showing them to some bigger people in the industry and we’ll see where that takes me. In the next couple of months, I think I’ll have a single out, and I’m excited for people to hop on this new journey of mine.”

Maroney’s previous journey, her post-Olympic fame, included a trip to the White House and doing the not-impressed face alongside President Obama.

“Oh my God. All of this stuff happened so fast, like dominoes, and you really don’t have time to think about it or respond. You’re all of a sudden, like, ‘Oh, I’m on the Olympic team? Oh, we just won a gold medal? Oh, now I’m a meme?’” said Maroney, who talked to Gabby Douglas and her other former teammates after the Olympic Trials, but is not sure if she will go cheer them on in Rio next month.

Maroney and Barack Obama at the White House.

“I mean, that’s how it happened. I had never fallen on a vault like that in my life, especially competing on a huge stage like that, and to be honest, I was really, really embarrassed. And I was sad that I couldn’t have won the gold medal for my country, and I did that face for two seconds.”

Maroney also has dealt with controversy since London. Nude pictures, which she claimed were fake, were leaked on the internet, along with those belonging to dozens of other celebrities. And now, some Instagram followers are accusing her of getting lip injections, which she denies.

“Growing up in the social media world, it’s tough,” Maroney said. “Your face changes, you get older, your face fills out, and you fall into liking makeup and different stuff like that. And for people saying that, for the most part — it would kind of hurt my feelings when you haven’t done anything.”

Maroney kept pursuing her career as a gymnast, performing in competitions and not giving up on an Olympic return until recently. The sports retirement, the puckered-up photos, television cameos on “Hart of Dixie” and “Bones,” the Drake-like demos, it’s all part of an identity push-and-pull for the California native.

“I was a gymnast my whole life. I mean, I’d go to Starbucks and people would be like, ‘Are you going to the next Olympics?’” Maroney told the magazine.

“And when I’d say no, they’d literally look sad. So it was very hard for me to get excited about anything else. I thought that I had to do gymnastics forever. To be excited about this new piece of myself and this new part of my life is very special for me. … Even my bio on Instagram is like, ‘That girl that fell at the Olympics.’ Just as a joke. Because that’s how people come up to me and that’s what they say. That’s how they remember me.”

But can she be remembered for more?

This article originally appeared on the New York Post

Originally published as McKayla Maroney is making a life for herself after achieving the wrong sort of Olympic fame