Olympic Marathon: Morhad Amdouni explains the water bottle incident

Morhad Amdouni became the biggest villain in the Olympic marathon and now he’s telling his story.
The 33-year-old Frenchman finished 17th but became one of the most followed runners after the race as a video went viral on Twitter.The video shows Amdouni approaching a water station along the course, reaching for a bottle, hitting a row of bottles to the ground, and picking up the last bit of water on the table.
The video, posted on Twitter by former Australian Olympic distance runner Ben St. Lawrence, has been viewed more than 5 million times.While not everyone believed that Amdouni turned the water on purpose, he did cause a lot of hatred.
A YouTube video of an incident accusing him of “cheating” has been viewed nearly 500,000 times.Piers Morgan, a pompous brag who deserves no attention but still has a huge platform, called Amdouni “the biggest d-head of the Olympics”.Dutch politician Peter Valstad noted on Twitter that Abdi Nageeye of the Netherlands, who was unable to drink at the water station because of Amdouni, won the silver medal, while Amdouni finished 17th.”Kamma is a bitch,” Valstad wrote.
Amdouni addressed the controversy in a video on his Instagram account, saying he didn’t mean to knock over the bottle.He explained that the bottles were slippery because they were placed on ice, and that he was too tired to grab the bottles cleanly.
“So I really wanted to apologize to the athletes. But one time I tried to grab a water bottle and they fell off.”
Amdouni’s explanation makes perfect sense.He’d been running for an hour and a half in sweltering and muggy conditions (temperatures in the mid-80s and 80% humidity), so it’s only natural that his hands were shaking a bit.Too bad so many people are giving him negative reviews based on an eight-second video clip taken out of context.
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