MONTY BENFICA | Amusements | CONTACT
An Australian tourist has unintentionally won the gold medal in the Olympic power walking event after a wild night in Paris involving an excessive amount of the local party stimulant.
Lachlan Murphy (28) didn’t even know that the Olympics would be on at the same time he’d be in Paris during his Euro summer. What was even more surprising to Lachlan was that he would be leaving Paris with a gold medal.
Less than 24 hours before taking the podium and belting out the anthem he only half knew the lyrics to, Lachlan was with friends at a bistro trying to figure out what they were even going to do that night in the city of love.
“We pretty quickly decided that we were just going to drink beers and roam around the city, that’s what we did in Amsterdam last week and it turned into a pretty crazy night.”
In what had become an ongoing trend on the lads trip to Europe, an unnamed friend of the group suggested buying a bag, once again.
“It’s like a third of the price of back home, and way better, can’t really say no can ya”
What started as a modest bag slowly evolved into enough rack for a whole rugby league team.
While the group of Australian men walked over 30,000 steps, none of them are able to explain where they actually went. By 2am, Lachlan was nowhere to be found.
“We couldn’t remember if he told us he was going back to the hostel or if something bad had happened, we all agreed it would be best for us to just worry about it when we sobered up” Said Mitchell, Lachlan’s friend.
Lachlan was not in fact at the hostel, but had somehow found himself caught up in the Olympic power walking event.
“I can’t really remember the start of it all, but I do remember it was a great vibe out there, everyone was really psyched up, I guess that’s why I stuck around”
Somehow, Lachlan had found himself in the front pack of the power walking event trying to keep up with the guy he was having a DNM with, who was coming first.
“I did think it was weird that he was walking so strange and not really giving me much conversation”
Miraculously, Lachlan finished first after his main opponent dropped back to second in an effort to get away from the bag-powered DNM.
