Be a Sport With Dan Shannon

In This Section They Die Slowly… What Do You Mean, You Only Eat Chickens? “Keep Your Cool” Cuisine Pam Anderson and PETA “Steak Out” Heftiest Hometowns Be a Sport With Dan Shannon

Winning Athletes Powered by Veggies
Many top athletes have a secret weaponóvegetarianism! OK, talent doesnít hurt either, but many sports superstars swear that their vegetarian diets give them an extra edge.

Olympic track star Carl Lewis considers the year he went vegan, 1990, his best year of competition ever. Throughout the í90s, Lewis vied with Leroy Burrell, also a vegetarian, for the Worldís Fastest Man title and continuously beat one anotherís records.

A vegetarian diet powered two–time Olympic gold medalist Edwin Moses over the hurdles, and bodybuilding champ Andreas Cahling has championed vegetarianism for years, selling only 100% vegetarian supplements at his online store, www.cahling.com. Mike Mahler, a vegan strength trainer, says, “Becoming a vegan had a profound effect.…[M]y bench press excelled past 315 [pounds] and I noticed that I recovered much faster…[M]y body fat went down, and I put on ten pounds of lean muscle in a few months.” Pro wrestling legend Killer Kowalski went vegetarian in the ’50s after learning that the two men who first broke the fourminute mile, Roger Bannister and John Landy, were vegetarians.

Vegetarian tennis superstar Martina Navratilova has appeared with a rescued turkey on a PETA billboard. Fellow tennis pro Peter Burwash, triathlete Brendan Brazier, former middleweight boxing champ Keith Holmes, Heisman Trophy winner Desmond Howard, and endurance runner Scott Jurek all eschew, rather than chew, dead animals. Bill Walton and Robert Parish, two of the greatest NBA players of all time, were vegetarians, as is Minnesota Timberwolves star Anthony Peeler. John Salley, another NBA champ, is a veganóand so is marathoner Dom Repta, who has run 100 miles in just under 20 hours.

Kicking the meat, dairy, and egg habit means getting rid of toxins, saturated fat and more. Challenge your meat–eating athletic friends to give veganism a try for just two weeks; we bet theyíll like the results so much that theyíll never look back.

“People [ask] me…‘Where do you get your protein?’
I…say to them, ‘Elephants, they’re vegetarians. They grow up big and strong. And horses, they have tremendous endurance...” The meat industry cons people into thinking you must eat decaying rotting flesh to get your protein…[T]hat’s a lot of baloney.”
—Killer Kowalski

Proud PETA Member
Angela Proudfoot, one of the fastest female import drivers on the East Coast, fuels up on vegan foods and encourages others to do the same with PETA’s GoVeg.com logo emblazoned on the front of her race car. As a teenager, Angela worked at a Roy Rogers restaurant and watched chicken pieces arrive in bloody bags. Knowing how unhealthy meat is, that was all it took to “push [her] over the edge.” Says Angela, “I have a unique opportunity, being a racecar driver, to educate the public about vegetarianism.”