Silver Screen Time

Is the name on the front of the Olympic jersey still a helluva lot more important than the name on the back?

Here’s a provocation: In the year 2024, the outcome of an Olympic event is far less valuable than the story that comes from it. You don’t have to take our word for it, just watch the ongoing Paris games.

The icons are winning the games while they are losing their events. Viral shots of second place shooters from Korea and Turkey are proving this point.

Second Place Shooters

In one corner, silver medalist Kim Yeji of Korea was proclaimed by Glamour Magazine as the biggest badass of the Paris Olympics. Her high-tech headgear and lean-back posture transformed the esoteric gadgetry of the world’s most boring sport into high fashion.

In the other corner, Turkey’s Yusuf Dikec represents a normcore complement to Yeji’s ornamental style. It was his lack of gear that seemed to provoke a global fascination in the man. Including a fabricated origin story loaded with drama about payback to an ex-wife.

Does it matter that few people watched the actual event? That shooting as an Olympic sport is the spectator-equivalent of a paint-drying competition? Are these athletes the Hawk-Tua sensations of these games? How long before they are replaced by a new sensation?

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