Every four years (this time five), we have the Olympics where the best athletes from across the globe fight it out in their preferred events for world supremacy.
Olympics over the years has become the stage for sporting greatness but there also are some athletes or events that become memorable due to some mistakes, for being hilarious or just weird.
With just a few days to go for Tokyo 2020, here's a look at some of the weirdest and funniest moments from the past Olympics:
Michael Phelps and his death stare
Phelps is the most decorated Olympics athlete of all time with 23 gold medals and 28 in total. Apart from his heroics in the swimming pool, there's also another moment attached with him and the Olympics that is etched in our memory.
That's of Phelps giving a vicious stare, which was termed as 'death star' in media, to South African swimmer Chad le Clos before the 200m butterfly event at Rio Olympics.
The South African had stunned Phelps in London in 2012 in the same event to win gold. In 2016, Phelps had his revenge by winning the yellow metal.
Queen came down from the sky
Queen Elizabeth, the head of the royal family in Britain, is usually a very reserved personality. But at the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics, she was seen doing something very unusual — she jumped out of an aircraft with a parachute to reach the venue.
Well, she almost did. It was an actor dressed as the queen for one of the most epic opening ceremonies.
Slowest swimmer to win
Eric Moussambani had never seen an Olympic-sized swimming pool before going to the Sydney Games in 2000. But in Australia, he ended up winning the heat of 100m freestyle that also with a timing 1:52.72, which is the slowest record Olympic time.
In fact, he was the sole swimmer in the race after his competitors were disqualified. While the whole event was weird, it was also very inspiring, as the crowd cheered Moussambani the whole time during his race.
Human skipping rope
Chinese acrobats won hearts at the Rio Olympics by performing a funny routine of creating a human skipping rope gymnastics gala event.
To celebrate the success of the Games, two gymnasts from the Chinese quartet held one of their colleagues and swung him in the air like a rope while the fourth jumped over him.
Referee gets a kick
Cuba taekwondo athlete Angel Valodia Matos was banned from the Olympics during Bejing Games in 2008 for kicking a referee. What led to Matos, the gold medal winner from the 2000 Games, kicking the referee Chakir Chelbat's was the decision to disqualify him for taking too long during an injury timeout of a bronze medal match.
Kilted intruder during a marathon
One of the weirdest interruptions to a sporting event during the Games came in Athens in 2004 when Neil Horan also known as 'The Grand Prix Priest' or 'The Dancing Priest' interrupted Brazilian runner Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima during a marathon.
Horan did so to promote his religious belief that apocalypse was around us.
Vault set below the height
At Sydney Games in 2000, the vault for the women's gymnastics Olympic all-around final was set five centimetres low. It was adjusted later after some athletes pointed it out but by then it had already impacted some of the participants who had vaulted, affecting the final result as well.
Winning gold medal barefoot
Abebe Bikila's 1960 Rome Olympics marathon gold medal is an inspiration but also one of the weirdest episodes from Games' history.
Bikila is the first black African Olympic gold medallist but to reach that historic height he could not find the best shoe in Rome, so he diced to run barefoot and scripted history.
Lip-syncing during 2008 Games opening ceremony
Then nine-year-old Lin Miaoke became a star after singing Ode to the Motherland during the opening ceremony in Beijing. But it later emerged that she was lip-syncing to a recording by Yang Peiyi, who could not make it to the stage because of her lack of so-called photogenicity.
Funny lifeguard picture
Olympic Lifeguards. #BORED #Rio2016 pic.twitter.com/2bGwx1z9zj
— #TokyoOlympics (@NBCOlympics) August 8, 2016
One of the pictures that went viral from the Rio Olympics five years back was that of a lifeguard, who appeared quite bored while sitting during the swimming event at the Games. It's only natural to get bored working as a lifeguard during an event where the best swimmers from the world participate.
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