"It was just the right thing to do": 6 heartwarming examples of sportsmanship at the Paris Olympics

Japanese gymnast Daiki Hashimoto offered fans at the Bercy Arena a masterclass in, well, class when he hushed them in a seeming effort to mitigate any distractions during his opponent, Chinese athlete Zhang Boheng’s final routine. During the men’s team final, Hashimoto gestured to the audience to simmer down by placing an index finger over his mouth. “These are moments of true Olympics spirit,” one X/Twitter user wrote in sharing footage of the move.

 

His efforts on the high bar solidified the win for Japan in the all-around team competition, earning him and his teammates — Kazuma Kaya, Shinnosuke Oka, Takaaki Sugino and Wataru Tanigawa — a gold medal. China and the U.S. followed in the second and third podium slots, respectively.

When Lucia Moris of South Sudan crumpled to the ground during a preliminary heat of the women’s 100m dash in seeming agony, the first person to rush to her aid wasn’t a medic, but another runner. Silina Pha Aphay, an athlete from Laos, ran back to where Moris lay shrieking and clutching her right leg on the lavender track at Stade de France. Pha Aphay called for help from nearby medics and stood alongside them as they began to triage Moris. “Just cry out,” Pha Aphay told her competitor, urging her to indulge her pain if she needed to.

“I can only share her pain,” Pha Aphay told The Washington Post. “We are athletes. We are 100 meters – the same. All 100 meters athletes have to know how being hurt feels. And this is a big competition. It’s a big dream to come here. But you get hurt here. So everybody knows the feeling.”

In a surprising show of unity, table tennis athletes from North and South Korea posed for a selfie atop the podium following the mixed doubles medals matches. The long-divided nations seemed to suspend cross-border tensions after South Korea nabbed bronze and North Korea won silver — the interaction quickly circulated online after South Korea’s Lim Jong-hoon whipped out his phone to digitally document the celebration. 

 

As NPR noted, “It’s also a reminder that while the demilitarized zone divides the north and south, it did not sever centuries’ worth of Koreans’ shared family ties and culture.”

 

The podium moment is all the more special, given the rocky start the nations saw during the Olympic opening ceremony when South Korea’s 143 athletes were incorrectly introduced as being from North Korea. “The problem was identified as a human error, for which the IOC is deeply sorry,” Olympic organizers said in a statement.

When He Bingjiao of China won the silver medal in badminton, she made sure to pay tribute to her opponent in the finals, who was unable to be there. As she stood on the podium, He held her medal in one hand and a minuscule pin with the Spanish flag in the other, a symbol meant to honor Spain’s Carolina Marin, who had been leading the standings until she suffered an injury and was forced to withdraw.

 

Speaking to reporters during the medal ceremony, He said, “I hope she can see this scene and I wish her a speedy recovery,” according to the BBC.

Halfway through an Aug. 3 handball match between Angola and Brazil, with both teams vying for a spot in the quarter-finals, Angolan captain Albertina Kassoma suffered a devastating knee injury. Unable to lift herself from the ground — even with assistance from Angola’s team doctor and Brazilian goalkeeper, Gabriela Moreschi — Kassoma seemed doomed to remain on the court. That is, until Brazil’s Tamires Araujo Frossard, a fellow line player and Romanian club league competitor, jumped in to scoop her up and carry her to the sidelines.

 

"The injury happened close to me," Frossard said of her proximity to the fallen Kassoma, per the Olympic's official website. "I kept playing at first because I didn't think it was that serious. When I saw her on the ground, I thought she wouldn't be able to get back up, because it's very rare that you fall and don't get up.”

In what was perhaps the most visually stunning and viral show of sportsmanship so far in Paris, Team USA women’s gymnasts Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles revered Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade in her gold medal floor performance by literally bowing to her on the podium. Biles — the most decorated American Olympics gymnast of all time — finished runner-up to Andrade, one of her fiercest rivals, in the floor exercise on Aug. 5. After the bow, Andrade touchingly reached for Biles and Chiles’ hands

 

Speaking to TODAY about the move, Biles said, “I think it's all about sportsmanship, and we don't care whether we win or lose. We're always going to keep a good face and support our competitors because they've worked just as hard as we have for that moment.”

 

"So you have to give them their flowers," she continued, speaking about the bow. "And that's exactly what me and Jordan were doing, and we were so happy for her. She deserved it. She had the best floor routine of the day and in the Olympics. So it's like, yeah, she deserved it."

 

“It was just the right thing to do,” Biles said, according to the Associated Press. “She’s queen.”