Fact check: Claim that Olympic bobsledders named sled 'Biden' originated as satire
The claim: The U.S. Olympic bobsled team named its sled 'Biden' to critique president
More than a dozen Facebook posts claim a group of men’s bobsledders on Team USA are in on a joke about President Joe Biden.
In one post published Feb. 1, four bobsledders dressed in stars and stripes run to launch their sled. On the front of the sled is a small label reading “Biden."
“US Bobsled team renames their sled 'Biden' because nothing has taken America downhill faster,” reads text in the post.
Posts with the claim have acquired tens of thousands of interactions over the past week. Some users appeared to post the image in jest, while others questioned whether it was real.
“Oh my gosh. How true. Go boys,” one user commented on a Feb. 4 version of the post.
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No such thing happened, though. This concept originated as satire and includes an edited image of a previous Olympic bobsledding team.
Paste BN reached out to the Facebook users who shared the post for comment.
Photo comes from satire site
The image in the post stems from a Feb. 1 article published by the Genesius Times, a website that advertises itself as the “most reliable source of fake news on the planet.”
The Genesius Times article includes a supposed quote from American bobsledder Hakeem Abdul Saboor. The name, says the spoof Saboor, is meant to help the sled “go downhill faster than anything’s ever gone.”
The image in the article is an edited version of a photo from the 2010 Winter Olympics.
The men in the image are the four-man bobsled team that represented Team USA during the Vancouver Olympic Games. The photo was taken by Tim Hipps for U.S. Army Public Affairs, according to an archived description from the stock photo site Alamy.com.
None of the bobsledders pictured are competing in the Beijing Games. The original image included a sled bib number instead of a label that says “Biden.”
More: Who leads the Beijing Olympics medal count? How each country performed at the Winter Games
Our rating: Satire
Based on our research, we rate SATIRE the claim that the U.S. Olympic bobsled team named its sled “Biden" to critique the president. The headline and photo used in the Facebook post come from a satire website. The image in the post, which depicts the U.S. men's bobsled team at the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, is altered.
Our fact-check sources:
- Alamy.com, accessed Feb. 7, Image
- Genesius Times, Feb. 1, US Bobsled team renames their sled ‘Biden’ because nothing has taken America downhill faster
- Teamusa.org, accessed Feb. 7, Justin Olsen
- Teamusa.org, accessed Feb. 7, Steve Mesler
- Teamusa.org, accessed Feb. 7, Curt Tomasevicz
- Teamusa.org, accessed Feb. 7, Steven Holcomb
- Tineye, accessed Feb. 7, Reverse image search
- Paste BN, accessed Feb. 7, Get to know every athlete at the 2022 Beijing Olympics: Team USA athletes
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Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.