The Olympics are a pretty big deal.
The best athletes from around the world gather to compete.
Millions watch along, rooting for their favorite countries.
Competitive swimming leaves a lot of room for awkward situations, especially when it comes tothe Olympics.
Take the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, for example.
Many coming to the Games were aware that Rio struggled with polluted water.
It would’ve been cool, it could’ve been cool, but that’s not how this went.
Yang took off his cap and tried to throw it to a particular fan.
He failed, and the cap instead looped its way back around and into the pool.
Yang then sheepishly stepped over the barrier from the pool and retrieved the cap from the water.
He seemed pretty embarrassed, but he was still dedicated to getting the cap into the right hands.
He eventually got it to the fan he’d originally had in mind (perSwim Swam).
His achievement couldn’t be celebrated right away, however.
As he went to climb out of the water onto the pontoon, he collapsed.
The concerned medical team loaded him onto a stretcher.
“I was delirious but the stretcher at the end was a bit mad.
I just wanted to lie down and have a sleep” (via BBC).
My emotions and adrenaline were all over the place."
He was initially told, and therefore trained around the idea, that he’d be swimming 50 meters.
His race distance was twice that, but he would end up winning on a crazy technicality.
He looked “quite literally out of his depth.”
Sadly, a passport technicality would keep Moussambani from continuing his swimming career.
He wasn’t allowed to compete in Athens 2004, after which the media momentum around him died down.
But the attention surrounding the renowned swimmer in Rio in 2016 was different.
The tense exchange caught on camera involved Phelps and South African swimmer Chad Le Clos.
Later, reporters asked Phelps about the look and what he was thinking.
“Nothing, honestly.
I was trying not to even look at him.
He does his thing, I do my thing,” he said (perSB Nation).
