“YO DADDY, I GOT YOU”

When Carter hurled her last heave, she toppled New Zealand’s two-time Olympics champion Valerie Adams and became the first American woman to win a shot put medal at the Games in 56 years.

On top of beating Adams, Carter also trumped her coach and father, Michael, who won a shot put silver in the 1984 Los Angeles Games. Now, she teased, the plan was to regularly remind him she went one better.

“I’m gonna be walking around the house saying ‘yo daddy, I got you’,” she told reporters afterwards, as Michael looked on and laughed in the audience.

Coach Michael built a successful American football career after his shot put silver medal, winning three Super Bowls with San Francisco 49ers. He remains the only athlete to have won the Super Bowl ring and an Olympic medal in the same year.

Though many athletes hail from sporting families, children of Olympic medal winners seldom soar to similar heights. For Michael, watching Carter compete in the final rounds was both nerve-wracking and exhilarating.

“As parents, we jump for joy, are happy, but as her coach, I’m responsible for what happens when she fails. But she finally succeeded,” Michael told Reuters.

The path to success has not been smooth for Michelle Carter, who finished 15th at the Beijing Games, and then fifth at the London Olympics. Yet for Michael, both as her father and as her coach, the Rio victory was worth the wait.

“The coach has retired for this year and the dad is now just walking around happy, with his chest stuck out,” he said.

(Editing by Sudipto Ganguly)

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