At the world-renowned Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Colombian powerlifter Mari Sanchez wore One Piece socks and her protagonist Monkey D. Luffy. A strong woman who has surprised everyone by winning the silver medal by lifting 112 kilograms in the deadlift classification. The power of anime makes it back into the Olympic Games and its competitors.
Weightlifting athlete Mari Sanchez confesses to being a One Piece fan after winning her silver medal
In these Olympic Games 2024 we have seen everything, from its beginning in the Seine River, to many controversies in between. But now something more motivating and interesting has happened, since in the women’s weightlifting category, in the Envion lifting section, the Colombian Mari Sanchez has triumphed. Not only taking a silver medal, adding with this 3 for her country so far, but she would be pointed out in a positive way for wearing cute One Piece socks starring the good Luffy.
Mari Sanchez is a Colombian who lifted 145 in the snatch and 112 in the pull-up, giving her a silver medal that not many expected. But what also caught the attention of the public were her Luffy socks, to which the Colombian mentioned: “I am a little bit a fan of him, I think I have learned something from him, to fight for that goal, for that dream, he wants to be the king of the pirates, that’s why I stick a lot to it,” said the athlete.
In the story, Mari revealed that she identifies with Luffy’s character, who seeks to become the king of pirates, just as she pursues her dream in weightlifting. She has not been the only one within the Olympics to make a reference to anime or One Piece characters. An example of this is Payton Otterdahl, who in his entry for the shot put competition made the entry of Luffy in his Gear 4 being portrayed in an epic way. Something similar happened with the Nier: Automata franchise within the artistic swimming competition, something that we deepen in this note of our page.
Yeison Lopez and his references to Dragon Ball, Lorenzo Simonelli and his reference to One Piece in athletics, or Noah Lyles himself with references to Goku and Jujutsu Kaisen, anime was very present in these Olympic Games 2024. Also featured were the 10-meter air pistol shooting medal competitors, mixed teams, who starred in moments worthy of a Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure panel. If you want to see more incredible performances from these talented athletes, you can go directly to the Olympic Games account from this link.
The appearances of athletes referencing anime has increased over the years due to the popularity of anime. As we know, most of these series have personal development that can motivate these high performance athletes from a young age and therefore make them express their love for them. It is a pleasure to see how this is increasing and becoming more and more viral within the social networks. Let’s hope that this continues and that someday in the future our favorite anime will be a reason for progress for thousands of athletes in the world.
