Gymnastics: France's Benoit Caranobe is having fun and earns a medal

(Getty Images)
It seems French gymnast Benoit Caranobe was enjoying himself so much in the all-around competition on Thursday that it wasn't until the whole thing ended did he realize he had won the bronze medal.  While focusing on the favorites, like China's Yang Wei, Germany's Fabian Hambuechen, and South Korea's Yang Tae-Young, the media also seemed to miss Caranobe's surprise landing on the medal platform. 

"I was not taking any notice of my scores or anyone else's scores, I only realized at the end that I had won a medal," he said after the medal ceremony. 

Photos from the all-around competition after the jump!

"This was my best ever performance," said Caranobe. "I thought it would be necessary for some other gymnasts to make errors for me to place among the top eight. I just wasn't thinking about a medal at all. It is an unbelievable feeling."

   Source: Reuters

Comments

[Cam]

Now, THATS what I cakll the olympic spirit. Its great to see that there are elite athletes who do a sport because they LOVE it. Knowing that he was so unassuming that he didn't care where he was in the listing and was really just enjoying himself makes me like this guy even more. AS for the Swedish Bronze medalist bad sport, he can drop dead for all I care as he is an ungracious sack of s*it. I hope that there are more Benoits in the world.... And is it just me, or does he have a really cute smile?

[A Gaylord]

Vive la France!

Cam, you hit the nail on the head. It's great to see an athlete out there having fun and not really paying attention to the score.

I do that but I suck at sports, that's why I don't keep score. :-)

[Me]

You're right Cam!!! That's the true (modern) Olympic spirit. And wow what a cool way to earn a medal, too. What! they gave me a medal for clowning around!? Sweet!

[rankola]

NBC coverage (in the US) really really really stunk! We only saw 1, maybe 2 events of Caranobe. Thank Zeus the Hamm twins didn't show up, otherwise it would have been even more jingoistic. In years past, they would show more coverage of other athletes competing--guess that was when the US had no chance of medalling.

In the AA finals for the women, there was a long wait before one of the American gymnasts to go--there was a scoring discussion on Anna Pavlova. The wait was long enough for Daggett (he's so so gay, isn't he?), Schleigel, and Trautwig to replay Pavlova's routine. But no!!! Gotta cheerlead for the hometeam. At least the coverage (and commentary of the hosts) of the diving wasn't so lopsidedly jingoistic.
Lastly, NBC should be ashamed for the lack of technological sophistication for their online recaps--have to have THE most recent platforms (Intel duo for Mac--bought a new mac what, 2-3 years ago?, before the duo came out) and they don't have backward compatability? LAME LAME LAME!

[Alex]

I love this guy! Cam hit the nail on the head, Benoit's attitude should be something that is followed by all athletes. He totally deserved his medal... and he was so close to 2nd place too, just .050 separating him from Kohei Uchimura!

Benoit is so cute, and I wanna find out more about him... like a biography... but due to the language barrier it's a bit hard to find any information about him on the internet. Does anyone know of places where we can find out more about Mr. Caranobe? :)