Olympians are using a years-old speech made by an unexpected celebrity to commemorate their wins on social media.
So far, Team USA have bagged themselves an impressive nine gold medals, some of which were, of course, won by Simone Biles.
The highly decorated gymnast won gold at the Women’s Artistic Individual All-Around final yesterday (August 1), making her one of the most successful Olympic gymnasts in history.
A day prior, Biles and her teammates Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera also took the gold for Team USA in the group final for gymnastics.
Following their win, the girls took to TikTok to show off their medals.
The start of the now-viral clip sees Lee and Chiles miming a line from Kanye West’s 2005 Grammy Awards speech after the rapper won Best Album for The College Dropout.
West concluded his infamous speech with: “Everybody want to know what I would do if I didn’t win… I guess we’ll never know.”
Elsewhere in the monologue, West addressed his near-fatal car accident in 2002 that left him with two broken legs and a shattered jaw.
“When I had my accident, I found out at that moment nothing in life is promised except death,” he said at the time. “If you had the opportunity to play this game of life, you need to appreciate every moment. A lot of people don’t appreciate their moment until its passed.”
Lee and Chiles mimed the final line of West’s 2005 speech before going on to show them and their teammates – Biles included – saying ‘I guess we’ll never know’, while showing off their gold medals.
And Team USA aren’t the only ones to have used West’s speech for content creation inspiration of late, as Filipino-American figure-skating champion Sofia Frank did too.
Frank recently took part in the South East Asian Open Figure Skating competition and won gold.
Upon getting on the podium to receiver her award, Frank shrugged as mimed West’s famous line of ‘I guess we’ll never know’, in anticipation of making a TikTok video from it at a later date.
Frank has since posted the clip of the video sharing platform has has generated four million views in just a matter of days.
One person commented of the ice-skater’s video: “ON THE PODIUM?! QUEEN.”
“I love this generation so much,” chuckled another at the 18-year-old’s antics. A third added: “Omg this is iconic.”
Dozens of fellow TikTok users echoed similar sentiments, while others called Frank ‘amazing’.
Team USA’s current medal count – 44
