UrbanUpdate

The Olympics are a showcase for peak physical magnificence, a relentless Tinderfest (you think you don’t stand out in a bar? Try navigating a village full of gymnasts and swimmers in Rio de Fucking Janeiro), and proof that we are surrounded by golden sports gods and goddesses who can totally swim in emerald-green water and not die. So it’s a little weird that they’re all losing their shit over free Big Macs.

Indeed, aside from Biles, Ledecky, Bolt, Phelps, and the Slovakian canoe slalom team (REPRESENT, MY PEOPLE!), the clear winner in Rio this year is McDonald's, which established a fully functional calorie tent in the Olympic Village to offer free Big Macs, McGriddles, and dirt-cheap loaves of meat to hungry Olympians looking to kick-start just a littttttle bit of body decline.

You and I can hit a McDonald’s by driving 14 seconds in any direction (including up and down), but athletes are LOSING THEIR MINDS about this. (Just ask this badminton player.) The line, according to Time, snakes out the door, packed with the world’s most majestic humans waiting 30 minutes (30 MINUTES!) for flesh that's been smooshed into patties and shipped from various McProcessing facilities. McDonald’s may be the “hottest ticket in Rio,” the article says, which is probably fun news for all those people who’ve nurtured Brazilian culture for generations. (“Oh, really, okay, we’ll just keep samba, but you guys have fun with the M&M McFlurry.”)

Athletes and others from the Olympic Village line up for McDonald's.

The Washington Post/Getty Images

This, as you might suspect, is odd. McDonald's, nutritionally speaking, is better than drinking Rio sewage water, or drinking Rio green pool water, or really pretty much putting a liquid to your lips in Rio. And apparently there are benefits to consuming damp pickles pulled out of a 10-gallon tub with a soup ladle, along with a 72-ounce depth charge full of Mountain Dew.

Aleksandar Radovic of Montenegro’s water-polo team said McDonald’s was a “treat.” “McDonald’s is not good for the athletes,” he says in the article. “But our food in the village is so boring... We will celebrate with one Big Mac, and one Coca-Cola. That’s it.” Which makes nutritional sense, but dude, seriously, our 6-year-old T-ball teams celebrate harder than that. We give them Mountain Dew and a saddlebag of Big League Chew, and T-ball’s not even a sport. You play water polo. At least treat yourself to a Hot Caramel Sundae.

There is some precedent for this. Usain Bolt famously claimed he snorfed down McNuggets before murdering the 100m world record at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. (If eating six gluey-tasting chicken glumps makes you good, my son will soon assume the powers of Jesus.) And McDonald’s has been adorning the Olympics with commercials that tout McNuggets as being made of chicken now (whee!), instead of the processed meat/slurry/discarded animal legs they pushed years ago.

To be fair: Athletes metabolize this sludge faster than those of us here in Real America, the ones with all the trucks. Phelps can basically lay eyes on a Quarter Pounder and immediately convert it into fuel using only his thoughts. I don’t even think Katie Ledecky eats—she probably just plugs into a charging crystal. And reports have said the official Olympic food is more or less seventh-grade cafeteria style, only with worse rolls and less chocolate milk. So these guys can eat two weeks of occasional Big Macs and be fine. But I’d be lying if I said the idea didn’t make me grimace.

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