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The internet’s favorite 2024 Olympic athletes, from “Pommel Horse Guy” to a gymnast holding a wheel of cheese
From a man with one job — to absolutely crush it on the pommel horse — to a sharpshooter, to a rugby player making Olympic Village her “Love Island,” several Olympians have gained hero status both at the Paris Games and online. They’ve not only become champions in their sports but the subjects of viral videos and memes.
Here are the breakout stars the internet is loving from the Paris Olympics.
Steven Nedoroscik, “Pommel Horse Guy”
Steven Neodoroscik, 25, is a specialist for Team USA men’s gymnastics, meaning he was brought onto the team for his expertise in one event: pommel horse. He captured hearts when he accomplished a difficult feat, waiting around for hours until it was time for his event, a 45-second performance that became crucial for the team.
If Neodoroscik aced the pommel horse in the team all-around event, the U.S. had a chance at nabbing a medal. With a handful of mistakes in the other events, they needed him to score high enough to bring them back.
Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images
Seen resting his eyes on the sidelines while he waited around for his the make-or-break moment, Neodoroscik, described by some online as a “sleeper agent,” ripped off his glasses like Clark Kent transforming into Superman and jumped on that pommel horse.
He has said in several interviews he can’t see without his glasses, but if he keeps them on for the event, they’ll fly off. So he does it with blurred vision, saying he doesn’t need his eyesight, just the feeling.
His performance ignited his teammates, fans at the Olympics and those watching at home. He jumped off the pommel horse proudly, celebrated with the team and looked up to see he had earned a 14.866 – enough to win the team a Bronze in the all around event.
Eurasia Sport Images / Getty Images
The Worcester, Massachusetts, native, a Penn State grad with an electrical engineering degree and a talent for solving a Rubik’s cube, has been endearingly called a nerd by some. It may be his modest personality – admitting he was a late bloomer to the sport and didn’t get recruited by the NCAA – and his love of his girlfriend, whom he frequently talks about, that captured hearts.
And to many, he’s a hero. The Team USA men’s gymnastics team hasn’t taken home an Olympic medal in 16 years and pommel horse was their weak spot. Neodoroscik understood the assignment and has since been called Spiderman, Clark Kent and Team USA’s secret weapon.
Neodoroscik, who won two national titles before his Olympics debut, isn’t done. He will once again be the last person to compete for the team, this time, in the individual pommel horse competition on Saturday.
Ilona Maher, the body positive social media star
Twenty-seven-year-old Ilona Maher helped Team USA women’s rugby earn its first Olympic medal in Paris – but she’s more than athlete. Maher has become a role model online, using social media to break down body shaming and stereotypes.
When she received a comment about her body mass index, Maher, who is 5-foot-10 and 200 pounds, set the record straight on social media, explaining that her body type doesn’t bother her – she has about 170 lbs of lean mass, which makes her a fit athlete.
She told CBS News’ Jamie Yuccas that the haters are her motivators. “I think there has always been a divide. People believing that, oh, when you play sports, if you’re an athlete, you can’t be feminine,” the Burlington, Vermont, native said. “I feel that I can be a beast and can play this very physical, aggressive sport while also keeping my femininity while I do it.”
Despite others calling her masculine, she says she has always felt feminine. “For me, it’s really important that I am doing something that’s showing what my body is capable of and that’s why I want other women to even (if) it’s just, get in the gym and lift weights, like see what your body can do, you know, do get to the point where you can do a pull-up. Oh man, I’m so powerful. I can do this. I just think it gave me a new perspective on my body,” she said.
The two-time Olympian has also treated her millions of social media followers to behind-the-scenes content at the Olympics. She’s traded Olympic pins with stars like Simone Biles, met former NFL player Jason Kelce and tried to break the infamous cardboard beds in Olympic Village.
She’s brought a self deprecating humor to her videos about finding love at the Olympics, calling the village were athletes stay “Olympic Villa” – a play on the reality dating show Love Island, where singles try to find a mate in a villa.
After helping her team win the bronze, she celebrated by strutting her stuff down a catwalk at Champions Park, a venue where athletes go to get their much-deserved accolades.
Kim Yeji, the Olympics’ “coolest” athlete
Kim Yeji, a sharpshooter from the Republic of Korea, has gone viral for her performance in her pistol shooting event – because she made it look so cool.
Kim wore a pair of custom bespoke glasses to help with her precision, a baseball cap and black outfit that many online said made her look “badass.”
She’s been described widely on social media as the “coolest” athlete at the Olympics – but a softer accessory also gained wide attention. Kim carried her daughter’s stuffed elephant toy during her event, holding the toy to her hip as if it were another pistol in her holster.
/ Getty Images
Videos of her bad to the bone shooting performance – where she nonchalantly shoots her gun, takes out the bullet and stares down the camera – have gone viral. As many have said online, she gave “main character energy.”
The stern-faced Kim earned silver in the 10 meter air pistol competition while her teammate, Oh Ye Jin, won gold. The 31-year-old also broke a world record this year in the 25m pistol women’s final at the rifle World Cup in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Giorgia Villa, the gymnast sponsored by cheese
Many athletes get brand sponsorships, typically with athletic wear brands or sports drinks. But Italian gymnast Giorgia Villa has the most iconically Italian sponsorship ever – parmesan cheese.
Villa, a 21-year-old from Ponte San Pietro, helped lead her team to silver in the team all around event. But old photos from a 2021 ad campaign with Parmigiano Reggiano really made her stand out. In the ad, Villa wears her leotard and cradles a giant wheel of cheese on a gymnastics mat. In another shot, she does a split on four wheels of cheese.
In an post on social media, Villa referred to the cheese as her “best friend.” The images went viral this week, with many saying on social media they wanted to become an athlete just for the hope that they could get such a sponsor.
Adidas collaborated on a post with Villa on Instagram, saying she went down in history. But commenters were hoping to see another brand post on her social media – the cheese. “Girl I’m here for the cheese please?” one person commented.
“Came here cause I was told she takes pictures with giant wheels of cheese. leaving disappointed,” another wrote.
“Where’s the cheese ma’am,” followed another.
Villa and her team made history when they won silver, Italy’s first medal in the event since 1928. Brazil earned their first team medal in the event ever, taking home bronze.
Leon Marchand, the next Phelps
French swimmer Leon Marchand is being compared with Olympic great Michael Phelps – and Phelps sees his greatness too.
“For me, nobody believed that I was able to do the things that I was trying to do, right? But I did, deep down inside, and same thing for [Marchand],” Phelps said told sports analyst Pat McAfee. “A lot of people said my records were never gonna be broken and untouched, but clearly it’s not that.”
At the Paris Games, Marchand broke Phelps’ record in the 400m individual medley.
Deepbluemedia/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images
Marchand said swimming the race in 4:02.50 was “insane” and one of the most painful things he’s done. “It was amazing to do it here, and the time is crazy,” he said.
Phelps told McAfee he loves being able to see a young man have a dream and work to achieve it. “He and I have so many similarities,” he said.
In Paris, Marchand also broke Hungarian swimmer Kristóf Milák’s record in the 200m freestyle race. Phelps also acknowledged how hard Marchaud’s race day was.
After beating Milak, he had to go on to swim the 200m breaststroke. “That’s probably the greatest double I’ve ever seen in the history of the sport,” Phelps said while commentating on the race. “To be able to go 1:52 and 2:05, the kid can obviously swim, we know that, and if we didn’t know it before, he’s gonna be here for a long time. He’s gonna make a lot of noise.”
If you need any more convincing, Marchand won gold in all three of the aforementioned Olympics events.
Another connection to Phelps: Marchand trained with the same coach, Bob Bowman, who trained Phelps as a child and at University of Michigan. Marchand was so keen on following in Phelps’ footsteps, he emailed Bowman saying he wanted to swim on his team at Arizona State University, he told NBC. The email worked, and he joined the team in 2020.
The Toulouse native is the son of two swimmers, Olympian Xavier Marchand and French record holder Céline Bonnet.
Gianmarco Tamberi, the apologetic husband
Italian high jumper Gianmarco Tamberi made headlines before the competitions even began. After the opening ceremonies last week, he posted an apology to his wife – because he lost his wedding ring in the Seine during the athletes’ entrance to the event on boats.
Tamberi stood at the front of the Italian team’s boat, waving his country’s flag and unknowingly losing his wedding band in the river below.
John Walton/PA Images via Getty Images
“I’m sorry my love, I’m so sorry,” he wrote to his wife, Chiara, in a social media post after realizing he lost the ring – blaming it on losing too much weight and practicing “irrepressible enthusiasm,” BBC News reports.
“If it had to happen, if I had to lose this ring, I couldn’t imagine a better place,” he wrote. His ring, he said, will “remain forever in the riverbed of the city of love” and he told his wife they could throw her ring in the river too, so they can be there together. His romantic note for his wife made people across the world swoon – and she found it sweet, too.
“Only you could turn this into something romantic,” she commented on the apology post.
Tamberi’s high jump events don’t begin until Aug. 7. He said in his Instagram post he hopes to come home with even bigger gold than the lost ring.
CBS News
North Korea tests missiles ahead of U.S. election, says American actions warrant its nuclear weapons buildup
Seoul — North Korea fired a salvo of short-range ballistic missiles early Tuesday, Seoul’s military said. It was Pyongyang’s second launch in days and it came just hours before Americans were set to vote for a new president.
The nuclear-armed North last week test-fired what it said was its most advanced and powerful solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). That was Kim Jong Un’s first weapons test since he was accused by U.S. and Ukrainian officials of sending soldiers to help support Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
North Korea, which has denied the deployment, is under growing international pressure to withdraw its troops from Russia, with Seoul warning Tuesday that thousands of soldiers were being deployed to front-line areas, including the Russian region of Kursk, which Ukrainian troops pushed into months ago.
Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said it detected the launch of “several short-range ballistic missiles” at around 7:30 a.m. Tuesday (5:30 p.m. Eastern, Monday) into waters east of the Korean peninsula. The missiles flew approximately 248 miles and Seoul’s military said it had tracked the launch in real time while sharing information with Tokyo and Washington.
ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP/Getty
“In preparation for additional launches, our military has strengthened surveillance and alertness,” it added. Seoul was set to get more U.S. help in monitoring the North’s missile launches, meanwhile, with the State Department in Washington announcing Monday the approval of a new military aid package worth almost $5 billion.
That package includes the potential sale of airborne early warning and control systems to South Korea, with the approval of four E-7 Airborne Early Warning & Control (AEW&C) aircraft, 10 jet engines, and other systems and support elements, at an estimated total cost of $4.92 billion.
The early warning and control aircraft, known as Wedgetails, would enable South Korea to detect missiles and other threats more swiftly and from greater distances than ground-based radar systems.
“This proposed sale will improve the Republic of Korea’s ability to meet current and future threats by providing increased intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and airborne early warning and control capabilities,” the State Department said. “It will also increase the ROK Air Force’s command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) interoperability with the United States.”
On Sunday, South Korea, Japan and the United States conducted a joint air drill involving a U.S. B-1B bomber, South Korean F-15K and KF-16 fighter jets, and Japanese F-2 jets, in response to the ICBM launch. Such joint drills infuriate Pyongyang, which views them as rehearsals for invasion.
U.S. Air Force/South Korea Defense Ministry/AP
Pyongyang called its latest launch “a direct response to the trilateral aerial exercises over the weekend,” Han Kwon-hee of the Korea Association of Defense Industry Studies told AFP. “Given it was a salvo of short-range missiles, the North is indicating that it not only has long-range missiles capable of reaching the U.S., but also short-range ones to target all bases in South Korea and Japan.”
Kim Yo Jong, sister of the country’s leader and a key spokesperson, called the U.S.-South Korea-Japan exercises an “action-based explanation of the most hostile and dangerous aggressive nature of the enemy toward our Republic.”
In a statement carried Tuesday by the official Korean Central News Agency, she said the drill was “absolute proof of the validity and urgency of the line of building up the nuclear forces we have opted for and put into practice.”
Seoul has long accused the nuclear-armed North of sending weapons to help Moscow fight Kyiv and alleged that Pyongyang has moved to deploy soldiers en masse since Kim signed a mutual defense deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin in June.
“More than 10,000 North Korean soldiers are currently in Russia, and we assess that a significant portion of them are deployed to front-line areas, including Kursk,” Jeon Ha-gyu, a spokesman for the South Korean Defense Ministry, said Tuesday.
Seoul, a major weapons exporter, has said it is reviewing whether to send weapons directly to Ukraine in response, something it has previously resisted due to longstanding domestic policy that prevents it from providing weaponry into active conflicts.
With its recent testing spate, “Pyongyang is showing that its contribution of weapons and troops to Russia’s war in Ukraine does not curtail its military activities closer to home,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. “On the contrary, cooperation with Moscow appears to enable blatant violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions.”
On Monday, Robert Wood, U.S. deputy ambassador to the U.N., slammed the North’s advancing ballistic missile program and said Russia and China were preventing the U.N. from holding Pyongyang to account.
Beijing and Moscow “have repeatedly shielded the DPRK, contributing to the normalization of these tests and emboldening the DPRK to further violate this Council’s sanctions and resolutions,” he said, referring to the North by its official name.
Speaking Tuesday in Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko said the North’s missile tests were a justified reaction to U.S. “provocations,” according to Russia’s state-run TASS news agency.
The U.S. president hasn’t been given a raise in more than 20 years.
That means Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will earn the same salary as their predecessor: $400,000 a year, as specified in Title 3 of the U.S. Code, paid monthly. The president also gets an additional $50,000 for expenses (non-taxable), a $100,000 travel account and a $19,000 entertainment budget.
Of course, the nation’s commander in chief is also entitled to other benefits, not least of which is a paid-for mansion known as the White House, as a residence.
Between 1969 and 2001, the last time Congress boosted the chief executive’s pay, the president earned $200,000 annually. In a 1999 hearing on the proposed pay raise, it was noted that compensation for “one of the most difficult, demanding and important jobs on the face of the earth” had not risen in three decades, while the salaries of private-sector chief executive officers were soaring.
Government reform expert Paul C. Light testified that he supported a presidential salary increase “if only to signal that the American political system values its chief executive enough to occasionally boost the base salary.”
How much did U.S. presidents earn in the past?
Historically, the president’s annual salary was worth a lot more when taking inflation into account.
Here’s what presidents made per year during previous historical periods, according to the University of Michigan, citing Congressional Quarterly’s “Guide to the Presidency.” How much that pay is worth in today’s dollars, after adjusting for inflation and based on calculations from Officialdata.org, is noted in parentheses:
1789: $25,000 ($895,741)
1873: $50,000 ($1.3 million)
1909: $75,000 ($2.6 million)
1949: $100,000 (plus $50,000 taxable expense account) ($1.3 million)
1969: $200,000 (plus $50,000 taxable expense account) ($1.7 million)
More money in memoirs
It’s worth noting that presidents remain on the federal government’s payroll after leaving The White House too. Since 1958, former presidents have earned an annual pension, which now amounts to more than $200,000. They also get office space in a place of their choosing and travel expenses, according to the Former Presidents Act of 1958.
U.S. presidents also typically earn much more money when they leave office through book sales, speaking engagements, media deals and other lucrative endeavors.
Ulysses S. Grant was the first U.S. president to write a memoir, which he famously finished only days before his death in 1885. Virtually every modern president, with the exception of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, both of whom died while in office, has written a memoir.
“It’s where a lot of money comes from after they have been president,” Barbara Perry, co-chair of the Presidential Oral History Program at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, told CBS MoneyWatch. “Written memoirs have earned them millions.”
CBS News
Man dies after being “buried under hot asphalt” while trying to fix dump truck in Mississippi
Police in Mississippi’s capital said a man died Monday when he was trying to repair a dump truck and asphalt poured onto him.
Darrell Sheriff, 41, was underneath the truck working on a hydraulic line when the tailgate opened and asphalt fell on him, Jackson Police Department said in a statement. Jackson Police Chief Joseph Wade told reporters that officers found Sheriff, who was a private contractor, “buried under hot asphalt.”
“It appeared to be some type of malfunction with his dump truck,” Wade said, adding it was a “horrific situation.”
The incident occurred at AJ Materials at around 10:30 a.m. on Monday, CBS affiliate WJTV reported.
#BREAKINGNEWS: A man died after he was buried under hot asphalt in Jackson. https://t.co/26CHfWF3XA pic.twitter.com/W45ifixH9u
— WJTV 12 News (@WJTV) November 4, 2024
Wade said people on scene tried to help Sheriff and “he tried to fight to make it through those injuries but it was just too enormous for him to survive.”
The police chief said the incident left witnessess and family members traumatized.
Wade said that family members said Sheriff was a “good, hardworking family man who just trying to make a living.”
The police department classified the death as an accident.
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Kelly Morrison, Tad Jude seek 3rd Congressional District seat
North Korea tests missiles ahead of U.S. election, says American actions warrant its nuclear weapons buildup