Kortney Olson is the woman with the “World’s Deadliest Thighs,” a title she earned by crushing watermelons between them faster than anyone on record. She is also a recovering addict, Australia’s first women’s arm-wrestling champion, a bodybuilder, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitor, an author, and the founder of the women’s athletic brand GRRRL. Olson has fought limitations, violations, and expectations. She has challenged the status quo, shattered stereotypes, and kicked convention to the curb, and she uses her story to pull other women up with her.
I interviewed Olson in 2019, when GRRRL was four years old and she was still chasing the watermelon record. Her words below are from that conversation. The facts around them have been brought up to date.
Who Is Kortney Olson?
Olson was born on November 9, 1981, and grew up in rural Humboldt County in Northern California. “I grew up as a ‘tomboy’, I guess is what you would call it,” she told me. “I was the only girl at a 72 person tee-ball camp or I was riding quads with the boys or going to monster truck jams. Where I grew up was a very rural area, so I grew up playing outdoors and shooting guns and getting dirty and things like that. I started downhill skiing when I was 4.”
“I’ve always had athleticism in my background. I’ve considered myself a ‘Jill of all trades, master of none’. The whole quote that I’ve learned recently was ‘often better than one’. I found that rather fascinating. Sometimes quotes get cut off to serve a purpose, but when you look at the whole quote it’s not such a bad thing. Like having a little bit of know-how in a lot of different areas has given me an extra level of confidence.”
The know-how runs wide. Olson started her high school’s first women’s golf team, made her competitive bodybuilding debut in California in 2011, and in December 2012 became Australia’s first women’s national arm-wrestling champion while living on the Gold Coast. She trained boxing, Muay Thai, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, the art she has a special affinity for, and competed in BJJ at state level in Queensland. She now lives in Las Vegas.
The Watermelon Record
It’s not “can crush”, it’s crushes. Olson does it, does it often, and it is incredible every time. The feat first put her on television in the “High Voltage” episode of Stan Lee’s Superhumans, and it is the hook that snags your attention. The official mark to beat was 14.65 seconds for three watermelons, set by Ukrainian strongwoman Olga Liashchuk in Milan in 2014.
Source: RepresentWomenMore, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
On June 5, 2021, at the opening of the GRRRL store on Main Street in downtown Las Vegas, Olson crushed three watermelons in 7.63 seconds, almost twice as fast as the Liashchuk mark.
The attempt was filmed and witnessed, though pandemic rules meant no Guinness adjudicator was in the room, so treat it as the fastest time anyone has recorded rather than a ratified Guinness title.
For comparison, the men’s Guinness record is 10.88 seconds, set by Iran’s Rohollah Doshmanziari in 2017. That celebration of power is the first layer. There are many more.
Addiction, Recovery, and the Fight for Self-Worth
There is a relentless and reckless spirit to Olson. It has driven her toward competitive bodybuilding and her own business, and it once fuelled a drug addiction. Her last drink was on November 22, 2009, and she has been sober since, a recovery she has spoken about openly for more than fifteen years. Even at birth she defied expectations: a 1980s ultrasound said she would be a boy, so her parents painted the nursery the “wrong” colour.
“Isn’t it fascinating to think the parents put out that energy that I was going to be a boy and all the rest of it, and then I came out like, ‘Ta-da, mother[expletive]! I’m a girl!’,” says Olson. “I often questioned if that had some kind of bearing on my masculinity, if you will. I’m open minded to a lot of different things. When it comes to why I want to participate or why I feel good or powerful in these types of things, I think there’s a number of different reasons and a number of different layers. It’s behavioral, genetic, it’s upbringing, it’s environmental, and so forth.”
While her story is rooted in athletics, Olson’s ultimate fight is for self-worth. She wrote it all down in Crushing It: How I Crushed Diet Culture, Addiction, & the Patriarchy, published in January 2021.
GRRRL: Betting Everything on Holly Holm
All of this is why Olson started GRRRL in November 2015. As a clothing company, it is about throwing away the old sexist and sizeist body types and making athletic clothes that fit women, not the other way around. Its launch was a gamble few founders would take: GRRRL was the only Australian sponsor of Holly Holm at UFC 193 in Melbourne, where Holm was an 11-to-1 underdog against the undefeated Ronda Rousey and knocked her out in the second round.
“I took every last cent, literally, in my name to launch this brand and sponsor Holly Holm,” Olson told me. “And they say, ‘scared money, doesn’t make money’, but wow, it was a pretty big gamble! This is definitely the universe working through me to create this. I’m here to just do a job and as long as I get out of my own way that will happen.”
“We’ve recently started looking into color diversity and abilities and having captions on all of our videos because why should the deaf community not be able to experience what we’re putting out there,” she explained. “It’s been quite a transition. On one hand my personal brand is inclusive, my market is switching to female focused, but there are plenty of men who want to hear the message and need to hear the message. There are plenty of men who want to put an inch on their thighs as I have my leg training program and my arm training program.”
“Of course, we have our GRRRL clothing power line that’s a big middle finger to mainstream advertising and media and bringing out the truth behind that. I feel like women have been told to shut up for so long that our voice has been silenced. There’s a level of aggression, we will be heard, we will not shut up, it’s time to change the game. I’m firmly here to let you know that. We are here to let you know that.”
#NotYourCompetition
When we spoke in 2019, GRRRL was sponsoring women who were changing how people saw MMA and its athletes, among them Rose Namajunas, then the UFC women’s strawweight champion, and fellow pros Miranda Maverick and Gina Mazany. Olson’s attitude fits right in with the sport, and Namajunas exemplified what GRRRL wanted to stand for: take a negative past and turn it into a positive future, accept imperfections, and move forward toward something greater.
“I saw a comment she made about her hair, saying it was in the way, so she cut that [expletive] off,” states Olson. “I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s what’s up!’ I just felt drawn to what she stood for and everything. Her and Pat [Barry, husband and former UFC fighter] are exceptional people, they’re just really great people. A lot like Holly with a lot of humility, being humble. That’s kind of a big thing. Some days, we can be great and awesome. Some days we cannot be so great and awesome. But at the end of the day, being humble and having humility, is realizing we are all equal. The only person you’re in competition with is yourself. And that’s the brand, #NotYourCompetition.”
Olson built a force that spreads the message beyond her: the videos of other women crushing watermelons on her Instagram, the personal stories on GRRRL.com, the GRRRL: LIVE gatherings in Las Vegas, and the cover-up tattoo of Prince over her old “KO” initials. “Now going forward, in two and a half to three years, we’ve developed this community that we lovingly refer to as the GRRRL Army,” she said. “We understand now that it is not our brand that is going to change the world, it’s the women who wear GRRRL clothing. The women who wear GRRRL clothing are now able to break through these barriers and these boundaries that are thinking their body is representative or indicative of their worth and their capabilities.”
Where Is Kortney Olson Now?
Olson has kept testing herself in public, not always happily. In March 2022 she took part in a Power Slap exhibition and was knocked out by Sheena Bathory, a bout aired in January 2023 that she later called an awful experience.
She has since turned back toward the work she started before GRRRL: Kamp Konfidence, her weekend camp for teenage girls, is being rebuilt in 2025 as The GRRRL Project, a nonprofit for girls aged 7 to 17, and she has talked about opening a women-only grappling academy. GRRRL the clothing brand still trades from Las Vegas, with stores for the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.
Sober since 2009, Olson is still the woman who crushes watermelons for the camera. The point was never the fruit. Her real lesson is how a fighter gets back up, and nobody learns that alone. Step into the Lab, where martial artists trade what got them through →
Frequently Asked Questions
Who Is Kortney Olson?
Kortney Olson is an American strength athlete, author, and entrepreneur born in Humboldt County, California, in 1981. She is known for crushing watermelons with her thighs, for founding the women's athletic clothing brand GRRRL in 2015, and for speaking openly about her recovery from addiction. She lives in Las Vegas.
What Is Kortney Olson's Watermelon Record?
On June 5, 2021, at the opening of the GRRRL store in Las Vegas, Olson crushed three watermelons with her thighs in 7.63 seconds. The previous mark was 14.65 seconds, set by Olga Liashchuk of Ukraine in 2014. No Guinness adjudicator attended Olson's attempt, so it stands as the fastest recorded time rather than a ratified Guinness title.
What Is GRRRL Clothing?
GRRRL is a women's athletic clothing brand Kortney Olson launched in November 2015, built around the message that a woman's body is not a measure of her worth. It launched by sponsoring Holly Holm at UFC 193, the night Holm knocked out Ronda Rousey. The brand's community is known as the GRRRL Army.
How Long Has Kortney Olson Been Sober?
Olson's last drink was on November 22, 2009, and she has been in recovery ever since. She tells the story in her 2021 book Crushing It: How I Crushed Diet Culture, Addiction, and the Patriarchy.
Featured Image Source: RepresentWomenMore, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
