Hammer throwers fall into the category of track-and-field athletes who look like they know their way around a bar. The men in particular, perhaps owing to the bearded look many of them sport, have an appearance I'd otherwise associate with home brew and football. It's a girth that—how do I put this?—correlates positively with heavy and prolonged beer consumption. In other words, they're big people. They have to be in order to swing that hammer thing around and then fling it through the air with the requisite momentum.So maybe this won't come as a surprise.But the other day, bearded and very large Polish hammer thrower Pawel Fajdek threw his hammer so far he won a gold medal at the World Athletics Championships in Beijing, China. What did he do afterward? Exactly what you think he did.From the Independent: "Polish journalists in Beijing to cover the championships reportedly confirmed that, having seen him at the restaurant, the athlete had 'drunk a lot in the celebration party' to toast his success."Normal. I would have done the same. Not often can you call yourself the best in the world at anything, let alone throwing a hammer. But Fajdek maybe overdid it. When he woke up the next morning, he found himself back in his hotel room, a little fuzzy on how he'd arrived.What didn't he find? His gold medal.Poor, probably-hungover Fajdek panicked. He called the police, who helped him "retrace his steps."Eventually they found the taxi driver who'd given Fajdek a ride home. The cabbie had the gold medal. It appeared that the night before, Faidek reached into his pocket to pay the cabbie and found only a handful of incomprehensible foreign change, giant gold coin included. So logically, Faidek paid his fare with the grandest of the coins, in this case, the gold medal.There's a happy ending though. Reports say the cabbie returned the medal to Faidek. Cheers.
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