2016 Olympic Gold Medalist Maya DiRado Announces Pregnancy; Baby Boy Due in January
Maya DiRado, who captured Olympic gold in the women’s 200 back during a four-medal performance at the 2016 Olympics, has announced that she will give birth to her first child in January 2022 with husband Rob Andrews. DiRado made the announcement on Instagram Tuesday, and the post included a photo of a gender-reveal where Andrews hit a golf club into an object that exploded into a whiff of blue smoke.
DiRado and Andrews were teammates at Stanford, and the two were married in August 2015. DiRado competed for the U.S. at the 2013 and 2015 World Championships before qualifying for the U.S. team at the 2016 Olympics. There, she took silver in the 400 IM and bronze in the 200 IM, and she helped the U.S. win gold in the 800 free relay. Her last event was the 200 back, and she faced off against Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu, going for her fourth gold medal of the Games. But DiRado used a stunning surge on the last 50 to overcome Hosszu and take gold. DiRado had already announced the Olympics would be the last meet of her career, so she went out with a bang.
DiRado had been in the news cycle recently after she criticized 2021 Olympian Michael Andrew for not receiving a COVID-19 vaccine prior to the Tokyo Olympics. She posted a thread of eight tweets that detailed her three main issues with Andrew’s stance against vaccination. She explained that she felt it would be honoring the American scientists who developed the COVID-19 vaccines by getting the shots, and she explained that in her experience on the Olympic team, athletes did everything they could to put the U.S. team’s interests ahead of their own. She believed that getting vaccinated and minimizing risk during the Tokyo Games should have been the highest priority for each swimmer.
Some of DiRado’s 2016 U.S. teammates, including 2021 returnee Tom Shields, pushed back against DiRado’s comments, particularly her timing.