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player ready...He’s not the fittest or fastest, but Ethiopian Olympic swimmer Robel Kiros Habte is still a winner.
After heat after heat of perfectly chiseled athletes swimming in these games, well-defined six-packs and flawlessly toned limbs start to look, well, normal. So naturally, Habte turned a few heads in Rio this week for looking closer to normal-normal.
Media outlets were less than kind in describing his 5-foot-9, 179-pound frame. The U.K’s The Sun said he was “flab-ulous” and “really tum-thing special.” The Mirror’s headline calls him “Tubby.” Several articles refer to his figure as a “dad bod,” and online commenters called him “Robel the Whale.”
Shame on all of them, and on anyone who body-shames any Olympian (or, you know, anyone).
Sure, the 24-year-old finished dead last in the 100-meter freestyle preliminaries, 17 seconds slower than the top finisher. By the time Habte finished, his competitors were long done, caps off, chilling on their lane lines. But his form was still better than the average Joe’s, and you can tell from video of the event that he pushed hard to the end of the race, and to cheers from the crowd, too.
He told Reuters that he had swum better in the past but was delighted anyway. “I am so happy because it is my first competition in the Olympics,” he said. “So thanks for God.”
Yes, Habte’s the son of the president of the country’s swimming federation, according to the Washington Post. Yes, he technically didn’t even qualify for the Olympics; according to Reuters, he got in on a special invitation from the International Swimming Federation to athletes from underrepresented countries (Ethiopia sent only two swimmers to Rio).
But he got into that pool and he gave it his all, just like every other athlete in Rio has done. And though surely he knew scrutiny would be headed his way, going up against all those world’s-bests with “perfect” physiques, he swam, he represented his country on the international stage and he had a great time.
It was never about winning for him, anyway; he also told Reuters, “I wanted to do something different for my country, that’s why I chose swimming. Everybody, every day you wake up in Ethiopia, you run. Not swimming. But I didn’t want to run, I wanted to be a swimmer. It didn’t matter where I finished.”
That’s enough to make him a winner in our book.
Margaux Henquinet is a RedEye copy editor. @gauxmargaux