Kobe Bryant Solely Particular person Ever To Win Each Olympic Medal and Oscar?

On June 22, 2024, X person @stats_feed posted, “Kobe Bryant is the one particular person to have gained each an Olympic medal and an Oscar.” On the time of this writing, the put up had acquired round 88 reposts and 840 likes. 

Kobe Bryant is the one particular person to have gained each an Olympic medal and an Oscar

— World of Statistics (@stats_feed) June 22, 2024

Additionally on June 22, 2024, Reddit person u/TonahVilla made the identical declare on the r/todayilearned subreddit, in a post that had acquired round 21,000 upvotes and 728 feedback on the time of this writing. The Reddit put up linked to an article titled “The Solely Particular person to have Gained an Olympic Medal and an Oscar,” which was printed on June 8, 2023, by Far Out journal, a culture-focused publication based mostly within the UK. 

The declare is true. Bryant, who died in 2020, won his two Olympic gold medals in Beijing, in 2008, and in London, in 2012, each instances as a member of the US males’s Olympic basketball group. He won his Oscar within the quick movie (animated) class for “Expensive Basketball,” which he wrote and narrated, in 2018 on the ninetieth Academy Awards ceremony.

To substantiate that no different Olympic athletes have ever gained an Oscar, we consulted Olympedia, a web site run by a self-described “group of devoted Olympic historians and statisticians” that maintains a database of details about each athlete who has competed within the Olympics because the first trendy video games have been held in Athens in 1896. 

In keeping with Olympedia, Bryant does maintain the consideration of being the one Olympic medallist — and, the truth is, the one Olympic athlete, no matter placement — ever to have gained an Oscar. 

The web site lists one different “Olympian” to have gained an Oscar: actress Michelle Yeoh, who has by no means competed within the Olympic Video games as an athlete however grew to become a member of the Worldwide Olympic Committee in 2023. Yeoh won an Oscar, additionally in 2023, for her main function in “Every part In all places All at As soon as.” 

An article printed on Aug. 24, 2022, in A.body, the official digital journal of the Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences, the group that awards Oscars, presents additional affirmation that the declare is appropriate, at the least for now. The article additionally factors out two different historic “firsts” established by Bryant’s 2018 Oscars win: he was the primary former skilled athlete in any sport to turn into an Oscar winner, in addition to the primary Black man to win an Oscar for finest animated quick movie.

Bryant is now not the one former skilled athlete to have gained an Oscar. Fellow former NBA stars Steph Curry and Shaquille O’Neal collectively won Academy Awards as government producers of the documentary “The Queen of Basketball,” which took the award for finest quick topic documentary in 2022. 

Bryant, nevertheless, stays the one Olympic medallist to have gained an Oscar. As such, we charge this declare as “True.”

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