While athletes are unquestionably the stars of the modern Olympic Games, there was a reminder this week that they sometimes have to share the stage — with animals.
On Monday, along a shoreline 15,000 kilometres from the Olympic flame in Paris, crowds gathered for the surfing competition saw an extra splash in the water. A whale breached the surface — leaping head-first — while two competitors were awaiting their waves in Teahupo’o, Tahiti.
“That’s a 10 right there,” said one television announcer. “That’s a perfect 10.”
The whale maintained a safe distance from the surfers, but was within distance for its photographic close-up.
It was, in a way, maintaining an Olympic wildlife tradition.
At the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, the golf courses were designed around lagoons teeming with wildlife. There, it was the capybara that became a star, unbothered and wandering through the grounds.
They were not disrupting play. They seemed to relax where they could get a better look at the events unfolding around them.
Australian golfer Bernd Wiesberger kept score, posting on Twitter: “Capybaras: 2, Caymans: 1, Owls: 3.”
Leading into those Games, organizers were not publicly concerned about capybaras. They were worried about alligators. It was widely reported at least five biologists were hired to ensure the reptiles could be safely relocated if necessary to avoid any disruption (which seems like it is putting things mildly).
Nature interacted with golf again this summer in Paris. American Xander Schauffele said he encountered an “ant pile” in the 13th fairway of Le Golf National.
“I was kind of putting my club down and sort of that fluffy grass almost, and I’m taking practice swings and I’m trying to get to my ball and I can’t, what’s going on, something is behind my ball,” Schauffele told reporters. “I called an official. It was just ants. It was a pile of ants, an ant pile, or whatever you want to call it, and their home; so I didn’t want to mess with it.”
Fellow American Scottie Scheffler won gold after shooting 19-under through the four Olympic rounds. Schauffele finished in a tie for ninth.
At the 1928 Summer Games in Amsterdam, it was ducks.
During a quarter-final race in rowing, Australian sculler Henry Pearce was said to have found himself upstaged by a family of ducks. As he raced against France’s Victor Saurin, the ducks decided to swim past in a neat, single file.
Pearce patiently waited for them to finish their crossing, before powering ahead to win the race, shaving three seconds off the course record and finishing 20 lengths ahead of his opponent.
In 2014, it was stray dogs.
They seemed to be everywhere around the 2014 Sochi Games. They popped up at cross-country skiing during training sessions, quickly capturing the hearts of everyone present.
U.S. cross-country skier Kikkan Randall said: “I grew up in Alaska where encountering a moose running out of the forest is a common occurrence, so I feel prepared for anything that comes my way.”
“I’ve been around animals all my life,” said American skier Gus Kenworthy. “It’s hard to watch.”
He arranged for adoptions.
Before the Sochi Games, reports surfaced that a company had been contracted to capture and remove stray dogs to prevent them from disrupting visitors or interfering with Olympic events. Meanwhile, a non-profit organization called Sochi Dogs has been working to coordinate the adoption of the city’s strays, noting that despite the efforts to remove them, the killings continued, and many dogs still need loving homes.
Animal welfare has also become an issue in Paris, after a video surfaced showing Olympic medalist Charlotte Dujardin hitting her horse. This prompted many riders to emphasize the mantra “put the horse first,” reflecting the future of equestrian sports amidst ongoing issues of unfair treatment toward horses.
Not all Olympic animal stories are that serious. Some of them don’t even involve real animals.
Like the Canadian moose: A beloved mascot standing two metres wide that began traveling with the team in 2000. It became the subject of selfies and even the target of playful rivalries, with competing nations occasionally “moose-napping” the moose within the athletes’ village.
In 2022, Shane Fombuena, games project manager for the Canadian Olympic Committee told The Globe and Mail: “I can’t tell you the number of calls I had in Tokyo that the moose was on the loose again.”
“There’s always a few countries that try to steal him. We know who the usual suspects are, we know what countries we have to go and poke and prod and ask for our moose back.”