Beautiful act rescued gold medallist’s Olympics

Jamaican sprinter Hansle Parchment clinched the gold medal in the men’s 110m hurdles at the Tokyo Games but the story behind the victory nearly tops the shock win itself.

Parchment delivered one of the biggest upsets of the postponed Olympics by beating US world champion Grant Holloway in the men’s 110 metres hurdles final but it almost never happened.

The Olympic gold medalist told the story in a video posted to social media last weekend, detailing how he caught the wrong bus from the athlete’s village for his semi-final and ended up at a rowing venue.

All the official Tokyo Olympic cars were booked and taking a bus back to the Olympic village and then another to the stadium would have left him struggling to make the start of the race.

“If I had done that, I wouldn’t get there in time to even warm up. I had to find another way. I was trying to get one of the branded cars for the Games to take me, but these people are very strict and adhering to the rules, and I would have to have to book the car from beforehand to get it to leave,” he said on the video.

“I saw this volunteer and I had to beg, ’cause of course she is not allowed to do much, and she actually gave me some money to take one of the taxis. And that’s how I was able to get to the warm-up in time, and had enough time to compete,” Parchment added.

The 31-year-old managed to get in touch with the volunteer, referred to as Tiana in the video, showed her his gold medal, reimbursed her the money for the cab before gifting her with a Jamaican Olympic shirt and posing for a selfie.

“You were instrumental in me getting to the final that day,” he told her before they posed for the photo.

Tiana’s act of kindness has received plenty of positive vibes online and apparently resulted in a huge thank you from the Jamaican government.

According to The Jamaica Gleaner, the nation’s minister for tourism has extended an invitation to the volunteer on a trip to the Caribbean island.

“It is selfless what she did; one would not know what the outcome would have been,” Edmund Bartlett of the Ministry of Tourism told the publication. “No matter where in the world she is, we want to reciprocate the kindness shown to one of our own.”

Parchment’s win was totally against the odds. He won bronze at the 2012 Olympics but missed the Games in 2016 because of injury.

The hurdler finished third in the Jamaican trials for Tokyo and didn’t claim victory in either his heat or semi-final. But once in the final, he outpaced a high-quality field in a season-best time of 13.04 seconds to take the Olympic title.

For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here!