Unfortunately I Was Not Selected for the Olympics

About

Unfortunately I Was Not Selected for the Olympics is a catchphrase used in a video trend in which users capture their fail sports videos that are captioned with an announcement that they did not manage to get drafted into their country's Olympic team. The trend achieved virality on TikTok during the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

Origin

On July 28th, 2024, TikTok^[1] user @tiptoeininmy posted a video of her failed attempt on uneven bars, captioned "sad to report I was not selected for the 2024 Olympic team." The video (shown below) received over 15 million views and 2.2 million likes in two weeks.

Spread

The post was followed by other users posting similar videos of sports fails captioned with the announcements that they didn't make it on the Olympics team, with a bass-boosted version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" being used as the audio.

For example, on July 30th, 2024, TikTok^[2] user @smellyshelby posted a diving fail video that gained over 10 million views and 1.4 million likes in 11 days (shown below, left). On July 31st, TikTok^[3] user /@www.ihaveacrushonyou posted another meme that gained over 90 million views and 13.4 million likes in 10 days (shown below, right).

The trend gained further spread outside of TikTok through reposts. For example, on August 2nd, 2024, X^[4] user @KevOnStage reposted @www.ihaveacrushonyou's video, with the post gaining over 33,000 reposts and 336,000 likes in one week (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References