Nine-time Olympic gold medalist caught watching Super Smash Bros clip compilation

After a race, Olympic gold medalist Caeleb Dressel from the United States was caught watching a compilation of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate clips on YouTube while cooling down.

Despite only debuting on the Olympic stage in 2016, the 27-year-old Olympian has already achieved an impressive record of nine gold medals and one silver. During the NBC broadcast on August 7, Dressel was caught watching Smash clips on his phone while taking an ice bath.

The stream displayed the swimmer watching a video that seemed to feature LAN matches with player cameras and tournament overlays. He seemed to skip certain parts of the video, using taps on the screen to quickly advance to the combos and kills.

As soon as the Olympics broadcast began, fans of Smash quickly noticed the game being featured and took to social media to express their support for the Olympian.

“The fan who spotted him shared that they were watching the Olympics with their mom and saw CAELEB DRESSEL YEET SMASH in the ice bath between races.”

I’m being so fr pic.twitter.com/EV9IA61KsB

— Justinbyleth (@justinbyleth) August 8, 2024

According to one comment on the video , Dressel is a dedicated Steve player and frequently competes in Smash matches with other members of the swim team.

In a 2019 interview with People, Dressel mentioned that during events, the national team gathers and enjoys playing Nintendo games together.

“According to the magazine, he mentioned that they played a significant amount of Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros, and a variety of card games to keep themselves relaxed and take their minds off of swimming prior to the meet.”

The video was even shared on the Smash Bros. Reddit, where viewers were able to identify one of the matches featured in the highlight clip. The match in question was from a year-old game played at an event held at the University of British Columbia.

Dressel is among the numerous athletes competing at the Olympics who have either directly referenced popular video games or anime at the Paris Games or mentioned them on social media.