Poppy Bilderbeck
An Olympics worker has gone viral for a moment they'll 'never live down' while treating an injured athlete at the 2024 Paris Games.
On Saturday (27 July), Brazilian fencer Nathalie Moellhausen went up against Canada's Ruien Xiao in the Women's Individual Épée at the Paris 2024 OIympics.
However, Moellhausen ended up fainting and assistants had to rush to her aid - one medic accidentally misreading a signal and ending up in a bit of an embarrassing situation caught on camera.
Advert
As soon as Moellhausen fainted, an Olympics organizer and a medic rushed to her side, one of them grabbing a chair to get her to sit on.
However, whether not quite realizing what was happening and just acting before thinking or simply mistaking the gesture as being for them, one of the medics saw the chair and promptly sat down on it.
They were swiftly told the chair was not meant for them, which led them to hop back up again.
Unfortunately for the medic, while the moment was over in a matter of seconds, it was caught on camera and shared online and it's not taken long for people to rain in on social media.
Account @PicturesFoIder, which shared the clip to Twitter, wrote: "This is going to haunt him forever."
"He was like 'ah, thanks for the chair. This job is hard'," another added.
A third commented: "He'll be in the shower 35 years from now and it will pop in his head and make him cringe."
"I'm gonna say he was trying to make sure it was sturdy by sitting on it," a fourth wrote.
And a final resolved: "When in big stress, I’ll do similar stupid things. I feel for him."
Moellhausen later returned to the match but sadly lost the feat, revealing just how much pain she was in during a television interview.
She said, as quoted by MSN: "I felt that my body couldn't move, and I was only entitled to a 5-minute break. Finishing the bout seemed impossible - she admitted."
The fencer explained she was diagnosed with a benign tumor on her coccyx in February earlier this year and didn't opt to have it removed given it was benign. However, she wasn't aware it could ultimately cause her so much pain.
So, on Monday (29 July), it's reported that Moellhausen underwent surgery to have the tumor removed and is now on her recovery journey - which is expected to take around a month.