Abbey D’Agostino and Nikki Hamblin get Rio fair play awards after giving Olympic Gold for helping each other

By Sona Kadam on August 21, 2016 at 4:04 PM

Sports are not just about winning and losing but it is also about what kind of a sports person you are and how you handle your contemporaries and this is the reason why awards like sportsmanship and fair play awards are giving.

Rio will be ending tomorrow, in this 17 day of play he have seen numbers of winners, losers and events, I am sure we all will remember the gold medal winners and those injuries. But there were some heroes in Rio also who will be remembered for year to come.

And two such player was Abbey D’Agostino and Nikki Hamblin. The International Fair Play Committee (CIFP), with the support of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), presented them with Fair Play awards for two separate acts of selflessness and exemplary sportsmanship.

What was the incident?

New Zealand runner Nikki Hamblin tripped and fell to the ground during the 5,000m race, accidentally bringing American D’Agostino down behind her with around 2,000m to go. The 24-year-old D’Agostino was quick to get up again, yet instead of carrying on with her race she stopped to help the stricken Hamblin to her feet, encouraging her to join her in attempting to finish the race. However, during her tumble, D’Agostino suffered an ankle injury, slowing the runner down, but Hamblin sportingly hung back to in return offer her encouragements. The two women went on to complete the race together.

The duo have now been hailed as the “Real Winners of Rio.”

“The thing about that moment was everything happened so fast. And it’s just, all I know is I got up and my first instinct was ‘OK, turn around, we gotta finish this,'” D’Agostino, told “I don’t think that was me, I think that was literally the spirit of God in me, like, ‘Let’s go.'” D’Agostino maintains it was Christ in her who took action.

“Although my actions were instinctual at that moment, the only way I can and have rationalized it is that God prepared my heart to respond that way,” D’Agostino said. “This whole time here, He’s made clear to me that my experience in Rio was going to be about more than my race performance—and as soon as Nikki got up I knew that was it.”

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