Olympic mystery solved: Do relay athletes get medals if they're replaced?
Welcome to Olympic Mysteries Solved, where we answer your most pressing questions from this year’s Rio Olympic Games. Seen something you don’t understand? Drop us a line and we may solve your mystery in a future installment. Today: sharing the hardware!
Olympic relay teams in sports like swimming, cycling and track occasionally feature different competitors in the preliminary and final events. The reasons for this are as varied as the teams themselves; sometimes there’s a strategic matchup, sometimes the team goes with a competitor who’s looking particularly strong, sometimes there’s an injury or ailment that necessitates a change. So what happens if the final team ends up medaling? Does everyone who participated along the way get a medal?
In a word: yes. Everyone who competed in the Games along the route to a team medal gets the hardware.
In this way, relay teams are not dissimilar to, say, soccer or basketball teams. If Team USA’s men’s basketball team wins gold, even poor Harrison Barnes, who’s only played short stretches in two of the four men’s games to date, gets to stand up there on the medal stand and get his gold medal.
It’s already happened in at least two sports this Olympics. Swimmers Missy Franklin and Ciera Runge got gold medals when the women’s 4×200 freestyle team won gold. And an Australian track cyclist who won silver despite not being on the final team had to suffer the indignity of not being on the medal stand to accept his award.
So, yes, bottom line: anybody who’s on the team at any point in the Games gets an award. Which is why, for the 2020 Olympics, I’m petitioning to be added to the bottom of the men’s basketball roster, and why women should seek to get on a swim relay with Katie Ledecky. Easy medal, guaranteed!
Previously solved Rio mysteries:
• Can NCAA athletes keep their Olympic bonuses?
• What are gymnasts spraying on the uneven bars?
• Why don’t Olympic medalists get flowers?
• What are those circular marks on Michael Phelps’ back?
• Why do swimmers wear two caps?
• Why is Rio’s Olympic cauldron so tiny?
• Why was Michael Phelps laughing during the National Anthem?
Podcast: Summer Sanders Q&A, punishment for doping cheats:
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports and the author of EARNHARDT NATION, on sale now at Amazon or wherever books are sold. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.
