One of the final Olympics events turned out to be one of the most controversial, when a French runner knocked over a row of water bottles at a hydration station before grabbing the last one for himself.
After days of facing backlash, Morhad Amdouni blamed the incident on “slippery” water bottles.
“To put an end to all the controversy from the video, I show this video to actually understand what happened,” the 33-year-old runner wrote on social media, according to Eurosport. “To guarantee freshness to the bottles, they are soaked in water, which makes them slippery. However, it is clear that I am trying to get one from the beginning of the row but they slip as soon as we touch them.”
Amdouni knocked over the bottles during the latter stages of Sunday’s 26-mile race in Sapporo, Japan, where temperatures climbed to 84 degrees Fahrenheit.
“I’ll probably let the audience be the judge as to whether that’s been done deliberately,” former track and field Olympian Dave Culbert said on Seven News (Australia) during the event.
Fortunately for the other runners, there was another water station just ahead.
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