Olivia Dunne expected her last year at LSU to be a farewell run, something she could finish on her terms. Instead, an avulsion fracture forced her to step aside in early March, ending her NCAA career before she ever had a chance to perform the way she hoped.
The adjustment hasn’t been simple. Dunne spent most of her life inside a gym, living by routines, repetitions, and the next upgrade. That shift surfaced again this week when she posted a quiet, almost aching video on Instagram: two old tumbling passes filmed in a practice gym, clipped together like a memory she was trying to understand.
“Watching videos of what my body was capable of a year ago, like it’s my dead wife,” she wrote. “Like how tf did I do that.”
The injury that changed everything
Before the season began, Dunne had already planned to make this her final collegiate year. The injury took away the ending she imagined. She explained the whole ordeal to People, calling the fracture unlike anything she or her doctors expected.
“It is such a weird injury. Usually, patella fractures are from a direct blow to the knee, but mine is from overuse, which you don’t really see very often. And really, the only thing I need is time for it to heal… and it feels like it’s been forever,” she said.
She pushed to return, hoping she could compete at least once more. But every attempt reminded her that the knee wasn’t ready, and eventually the fight itself became impossible.
Her life now looks very different from the one she lived at LSU. She still commands enormous attention online, with more than 5 million followers on Instagram and roughly 8 million on TikTok, and that digital presence has become her primary space. Partnerships, creative projects, and short clips from her everyday life now fill the schedule that used to revolve around mats and bars.
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