Shaun White and Lindsey Vonn are longtime household names, but at the start of the Winter Games, the A-list athletes were the only two recognizable Olympians heading to PyeongChang, South Korea.
It’s hard to imagine a news cycle without figure skater Adam Rippon and snowboarder Chloe Kim, but a mere three weeks ago, both breakout stars were completely unknown to American audiences.
According to data conducted exclusively for Variety by Hub Research, athlete awareness surged through the Winter Olympics, resulting in a huge increase in awareness for many of the Olympians competing in the 2018 games, most notably Rippon and Kim, who both saw drastic increases in their audience awareness.