We’ve been reading plenty these Games about the rewards offered to some medalists, the Philippines’s Carlos Yulo receiving an especially, well, varied list of goodies for his two gymnastic golds - including about €250,000, a three-bed apartment and unlimited colonoscopies and gastroenterology consultations.
But nothing tops what 14-year-old Australian Arisa Trew will receive after her skateboarding gold. “My parents promised if I won gold I would get a pet duck. They are really cute. I can take it on walks and to the skate park. My parents definitely wouldn’t let me get a dog or a cat because we are travelling so much. But I feel like a duck might be a little bit easier.”
Bingo card of chaos
You’ll have heard about the unfortunate Indian wrestler Vinesh Phogat being disqualified from her Olympic 50kg freestyle final after she failed to make the weight - not even staying up all Tuesday night running, using a sauna and having her hair cut could save her.
“Wrestling has won, I have lost. Please forgive me, everything is broken. I don’t have any more strength now. Goodbye wrestling 2001-2024,” she tweeted, announcing her retirement from the sport.
Mourners pay respects at funeral of Ugandan Olympic athlete killed when set on fire by partner
Paralympic cyclist Katie-George Dunlevy: ‘I want to inspire visually impaired children and the LGBT community to not give up’
Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn tops latest world breaking rankings despite Olympic flop
Raucous Dublin Airport homecoming reception for Team Ireland Paralympians ‘brilliant to see’
It all led to a bit of a muddle for the woman she was due to wrestle for gold, the United States’s Sarah Hildebrandt. She told USA Today that she’d been informed by “multiple sources” that the gold was “100 per cent” hers, that there would be no final. And then she got a call. “They’re like ‘bring your shoes’ - meanwhile, my family’s bringing over champagne.”
Mercifully, she hadn’t downed too many magnums, going on to take gold against Cuba’s Yusneylys Guzmán, who had lost to Phogat in the semi-finals. “I was preparing for chaos,” she said, “but that was not on my bingo card of chaos. It was like a fever dream, like it never even happened.”
One Olympian’s passage of discovery
Quiz time. A Paris 2024 Olympian revealed that he’d given up weed after visiting the jungles of Peru where, according to AP, he indulged in the psychedelic powers of ayahuasca, a plant-based brew use by indigenous people in Latin America for healing and rituals.
“I saw dragons! I was flying with dragons! I was underwater with dragons! I was lying basking in the sunshine with dragons, charging up!”
From which sport does he hail? A) Dressage. B) Skateboarding. C) Archery.
Ah here, it’s hardly A or C. Take a bow, South African skateboarder Dallas Oberholzer.
Oh Danny’s boy
When George Mills squared up to Hugo Hay after their 5,000m heat on Wednesday, the Briton, who blamed the Frenchman for the collision, informed him that he was a “****ing clown”.
All ended well, with the pair reinstated and into the final, but Mills’s reaction prompted some tut-tutting. “Everyone is saying, ‘he’s just like his dad’,” wrote his dad Danny in the Daily Mail. “But if I was the one on that track, my reaction would probably have got me arrested.” Any one who remembers Danny from his footballing days is nodding.
Word of Mouth
“I was thirsty at some point, I was like drinking the Seine, so, let’s see. I’m fine, I’m fine. I didn’t even vomit.”
Sharon van Rouwendaal of The Netherlands after winning the 10km marathon in the Seine, our tummies none the better for learning she was sipping that water.
By the Numbers: 74
That’s how many nations had won medals by Thursday afternoon, meaning 132 had yet to get off the mark. Blessed, we are.
