French marathon runner slaps water away from competitors, unsurprisingly finishes without a medal

Whatever happened to discreet gamesmanship?

People just cheat all out in the open these days. And now it’s made its way to the Olympics.

French marathon runner Morhad Amdouni was near the 28km mark when he approached a water station for the athletes. Needless to say, if you were directly behind Amdouni you probably had a hard time grabbing some water.

If you are going to do something foul to get a competitive advantage, you at least have to be smoother than this. I don’t know if Amdouni intended to make life worse for his competitors while they race in 84-degree weather and increased humidity, but it certainly looks pretty bad when you are giving a high five to the row of water bottles and only grabbing the last possible one.

Since it’s the Olympics, organizers had workers at the ready and a plethora of water bottles to replenish the table. But still, it’s hardly Olympic spirit that makes one runner topple over multiple bottles of water during a marathon race that already had 30 guys drop out, likely due to exhaustion and hydration issues.

Amdouni’s only saving grace is that he had to reach over and grab the water instead of just reaching to his side like some of the other runners had to do, but open-palming the whole water table is never good. It sure looks intentional.

Whatever happened to surreptitiously trying to gain an advantage? Like people grabbing your shorts on the basketball court so you can’t move off a screen, or a defensive tackle pushing the football back a few inches at the goal line. These are harmless, but depriving your fellow counterparts of hydration is just a step too far in my book.

It’s no surprise that Amdouni finished 17th, karma usually works that way. Kenyan runner Eliud Kipchoge defended his gold medal in the marathon event with a time of 2:08:38, a full 80 seconds ahead of silver medalist Abdi Nageeye from the Netherlands.