There’s so much focus on reigning champions and medal favourites coming into any Olympic Games, but for me, Paris has been memorable for the athletes who became overnight sensations for all sorts of weird and wonderful reasons.
There was USA women’s rugby player Ilona Maher, who TikTok’d her way through the Olympic Village while providing powerful commentary on patriarchy and body image.
There was Norwegian distance swimmer Henrik Christiansen, whose obsession with the chocolate muffins in the village cafeteria sent him viral (in a positive online way, not in a dirty-Seine way).
There was American gymnast Stephen Nedoroscik, a.k.a. “Pommel Horse Guy,” whose iconic glasses and Zen-like preparation gave nerds everywhere hope that they, too, could achieve Olympic glory.
There were two medal-winning shooters, South Korea’s Kim Ye-ji and Turkiye’s Yusuf Dikec, who both looked like undercover assassins sent to the Olympics for one last hit-job before retirement.
There was Raygun, Australia’s first ever Olympic breakdancer, whose… um… creative approach to the event sparked memes all over the world.
There was Raven Saunders, the non-binary American shot-putter who wore a full-faced black mask, neon-green and purple hair, gold grills, and long fingernails as they transformed into their competition persona, “Hulk”.
And then there was Imane Khelif, the Algerian welterweight boxer, whose battle against a vicious, reactive, and misinformed media questioning her eligibility outside the ring fuelled her first gold medal within it.
Thank you for reminding us why we ruin our sleep patterns once every four years to watch sports we’ve never cared about before.