The 2024 Olympian was testing new camera equipment off the coast of Sao Luis on Friday when he heard a woman calling for help, he wrote on Instagram. He swam over to investigate, and with the cameras still running, he caught the dramatic rescue on video.

It was cloudy at around 5:40 p.m. on Friday when he decided to use the newly arrived equipment, despite wind conditions that were “not the best,” he recounted.

“After sailing a few meters, I heard a cry for help” and followed the cry to see a young woman flailing in the open water.

“I quickly approached her with the kite,” he wrote. “I tried to calm her down and asked her to climb on my back. She was quite tired and powerless. I used the equipment to bring her safely to the sand where the lifeguards performed first aid at the seaside, and thanks to God everything went well.”

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A post shared by Bruno Lobo (@brunolobo31)

Lobo started out on a note of gratitude for “the day that God used me as an instrument to save this young woman, all honor and glory to Him” and admonished swimmers to “stay alert about the danger of the sea, rivers and anywhere you don’t know because the current in some places is usually very strong!”

Though lauded as a hero, the 31-year-old orthopedic doctor was humble.

“Thank you for all the messages,” Lobo wrote. “I only did what needed to be done and what was within my reach!”

The video showed him making his way over to the woman, whose head was barely above the water, and steadying himself with his kite and board while she climbed onto his back. He then let the wind pull them both to shore.

The clip ended with a shot of the exhausted swimmer being carried into shallow waters and greeted by her mates and lifeguards, then giving Lobo a quick hug before they all walk away and Lobo heads the other way. The rescued woman expressed her gratitude on his Instagram post.

“Words can’t describe my gratitude!” wrote the woman in a comment, according to the Olympic Games, which also shared the moment. “It was the salvation that God and my guides sent to me. I really could not handle it if I spent five minutes on the high sea, even knowing how to swim and using anti-drowning techniques. I wish you showers of blessings in your life!”

Lobo has had his share of blessings, at least in the athletics department, as a gold medal winner in the 2019 Pan American Games in Peru, a title he defended at the 2023 games in Chile, according to World Sailing, the sport’s governing body. In Paris in 2024 he finished seventh in the Olympic Games’ Men’s Kite Event.

The country’s winter sports federation, Swiss-Ski, announced Tuesday that the young athlete died in the resort town of Arosa, on the heels of her Dec. 14 birthday.

Local authorities said Hediger was practicing off-piste, or away from prepared ski runs, with someone else and leaving a closed track when she was caught in the avalanche, according to Le Parisien.

Emergency services located Hediger after a two-hour search and failed to resuscitate her. An investigation is now underway.

“We are stunned and in our thoughts with Sophie’s family, to whom we express our deepest condolences,” Walter Reusser, CEO Sport of Swiss-Ski, said Tuesday. “For the Swiss Ski family, the tragic death of Sophie Hediger has a dark shadow over the Christmas days. We are immeasurably sad. We will keep an honorable memory of Sophie.”

The organization noted that Hediger grew up in Zurich-area Horgen but spent a lot of time in Arosa.

There had been a great deal of snowfall in the days leading up to the avalanche, according to Le Parisien.

An estimated 2,300 landslide avalanches were reported to the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research (SLF) last winter, up from 293 the previous winter.

“There, her life has now found a tragic, abrupt, much too early end at freeriding, a beloved hobby,” said the federation.

Freeride snowboarding, also known as backcountry or sidecountry snowboarding, generally involves foregoing established trails for unmarked mountain routes.

Swiss-Ski said that, after conferring with Hediger’s family and life partner, it would not further detail the circumstances surrounding her death and requested privacy for her loved ones.

Hediger also accomplished her first two World Cup podiums in the 2023-24 season, according to the federation.

She also hoped to win a medal at the world championship in March in Switzerland’s Engadin.

Hediger last posted on Instagram on Dec. 15 to share that she’d competed in her first world cup of the season at Cervino Ski Paradise.

The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee placed an employee on administrative leave Thursday after The Associated Press reported that one of its coaches was accused of sexually abusing a young biathlete, causing her so much distress that she attempted suicide.

Rocky Harris, USOPC chief of sport and athlete services, sent an email to U.S. Biathlon national team members to address the “concerning allegations of abuse” raised by several biathletes in the AP report.

“We want to commend these athletes for their immense courage and strength in coming forward,” the email said. “Effective immediately, we have placed a USOPC staff member on administrative leave pending an internal investigation.”

Harris did not name the employee, but Gary Colliander was the only USOPC coach named in the AP report. Jon Mason, a USOPC spokesperson, told the AP that no additional information would be released while the inquiry is underway.

“While we are currently in the process of gathering all the necessary information surrounding these complaints, we want to emphasize that abuse and misconduct have no place in our community,” said the email, also sent to the AP.

Grace Boutot told the AP that after Colliander began coaching her when she was 15, he gave her a lot of attention, including long hugs and inappropriate touching. The conduct escalated after she turned 18 to “kissing, sexual fondling and oral sex,” according to a treatment summary by therapist Jacqueline Pauli-Ritz, shared with the AP.

The AP generally does not identify victims of sexual abuse except in cases where they publicly identify themselves or share their stories openly.

Boutot said she begged Colliander to stop but he ignored her. She said he warned her against telling anyone, saying his life would be ruined and her biathlon career would end.

In September 2010, Pauli-Ritz contacted Colliander and told him Boutot was suffering from major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder and he should stop coaching her, the treatment summary said.

“He did not do this until after the suicide attempt,” Pauli-Ritz wrote, referring to Boutot’s Oct. 7, 2010, overdose on antidepressants while at a training camp in Soldier Hollow, Utah. She was found by a teammate and hospitalized.

The next day, Colliander resigned his position with the Maine Winter Sports Center. He was hired in December 2016 by the U.S. Paralympic team, where he is associate director of high performance for U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing.

Boutot, 33, said she’s glad the U.S. Olympic committee is taking action, but is “incredibility disappointed” that U.S. Biathlon has failed to do the same.

“The true origin of the misogynistic culture lies with U.S. Biathlon,” she said. “The silence is stunning, to be honest.”

U.S. Biathlon CEO Jack Gierhart sent an email to the AP and U.S. Biathlon members late Thursday saying the allegations in the AP report were troubling. “We are deeply concerned about the experiences of the athletes mentioned. To all of you, I want to reaffirm our commitment to athlete safety,” it said.

Boutot was among a half-dozen Olympians and other biathletes who came forward after the AP reported earlier this year that Olympian Joanne Reid was sexually abused and harassed for years, according to findings by the U.S. Center for SafeSport, created to investigate sex-abuse allegations in Olympic sports in the aftermath of the Larry Nassar U.S. Gymnastics scandal.

They described a culture of abuse dating back to the 1990s, and said that while the men involved climbed the ranks of the sport, they faced retaliation that forced them to end their racing careers early.

EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org

The gold medal-winning athlete may have been entangled in bronze-medal controversy during the recent Olympic Games, but that didn’t deter her from revealing her thoughts about the future on Saturday.

“The future is such a huge word, but there are so many things that you can do within that future,” she said at the Teen Vogue Summit 2024 in Los Angeles, acknowledging that she’s often asked what’s next after retirement from gymnastics.

“Well, whenever that happens, I’m going to go into real estate,” Chiles said, according to People. “I love building. I love being creative. I love seeing things just be designed in different ways. That’s one thing.”

She also said she “100%” wants to become an actress, and would also love to sing. But she said her basic desire is “to make a brand for myself and make sure everybody understands that Jordan Chiles is Jordan Chiles, not just as an athlete, but also as a human.”

Chiles has spoken openly about her disappointment at losing the Bronze Olympic medal after Romanian gymnasts Sabrina Maneca-Voinea and Ana Barbosu appealed the judges’ decisions on one of Chiles’ individual scores on a technicality and won, putting Barbosu on the podium instead.

At the Teen Vogue Summit, Chiles said coaching gymnastics is not one of the things she wants to do, because she identifies too closely with what the gymnasts are going through.

Ryan Wedding, 43, remains on the run in Mexico, according to the feds. However, 12 of the 15 other suspects in the case have been rounded up in recent days.

Wedding’s organization allegedly moved massive quantities of cocaine — up to 60 tons per year — from Mexico into the U.S. and Canada, according to the Justice Department. The group used the L.A. area as a base to distribute the coke using long-haul semi-trucks, investigators said.

The group “triggered an avalanche of violent crimes, including brutal murders,” Los Angeles DEA agent Matthew Allen said in a statement. “Wedding, the Olympian snowboarder, went from navigating slopes to contouring a life of incessant crimes.”

Wedding competed for Canada in the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City, finishing 24th in the parallel giant slalom. He lived in the east Vancouver suburb of Coquitlam at the time.

Not long after that, Wedding got into the international drug trade, according to the feds. He was busted in a sting operation in San Diego in 2008 and sentenced to four years in prison.

But that didn’t deter him. Wedding eventually rose to run his own unit, even earning the protection of Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa Cartel when in the country, the feds said.

Investigators have connected Wedding and his accused right-hand man, Andrew Clark, to four murders in Canada. In one case, Wedding and Clark ordered the killings of two innocent members of an Ontario family in November 2023 in a case of mistaken identity, cops said.

They were also tied to killings on April 1 and May 18 of this year, the feds said. Clark himself helped carry out the April murder, according to authorities.

Wedding and Clark were charged with murder, running a criminal enterprise and conspiring to distribute cocaine, among other crimes in a 16-count indictment in federal court in California. Wedding also faces charges in Canada.

The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for tips that lead to his arrest.

With News Wire Services

So far, five people, including a minor, have been arrested in connection with the foiled plots, France’s national counterterrorism prosecutor said Wednesday. The suspects each face various terrorism-related charges, officials confirmed.

While few specifics have been provided about the planned attacks, prosecutor Olivier Christen confirmed one of them was specifically aimed at “Israeli institutions or representatives of Israel in Paris” for the 2024 Olympic Games, which ran from July 26 through Aug. 11.

He added “the Israeli team itself was not specifically targeted,” but he did not elaborate further, according to broadcaster France Info.

Authorities in the country were on high alert in the months leading up to and during the Olympics, which unfolded amid the contentious Israel-Hamas war as well as Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.

Christen told France Info that while the additional security was difficult to coordinate, the “challenge was met thanks to a very heavy investment, for several months, by all the services working on this subject.”

Some 30,000 police and gendarmes were deployed, with their presence bolstered by roughly 20,000 soldiers and between 17,000 and 22,000 private security, the organizing committee said ahead of the global gathering.

Other preventive measures included increased house searches and house arrests before the start of the Olympics, the prosecutor said, adding that law enforcement and security personnel have conducted 936 house searches so far in 2024, compared with 153 last year.

France also strengthened its airspace defenses, relying on warplanes, attack helicopters, surveillance aircraft and military and police drones to surveil the skies over Paris and the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, which hosted sailing and soccer events.

Ahead of the Games, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin repeatedly warned of potential security threats, including those from Islamic extremist groups, violent environmental activists, far-right groups and cyberattacks from Russia.

News of the foiled terror attacks come months after an 18-year-old man from Chechnya was arrested in May over an alleged plot to attack Olympic soccer events held in the southern city of Saint-Etienne.

He was accused of planning “a violent action” on behalf of the Islamic State’s jihadi ideology, which involved targeting “bar-type establishments around the Geoffroy-Guichard stadium,” the prosecutor said.

With News Wire Services

Gunn — more widely known by her nickname, Raygun — failed to score a single point during her Olympics showing, landing her in second to last place, ahead only of an athlete who was disqualified from the games.

Still, she set the internet abuzz, sparking an avalanche of memes and mockery with her wild performance, which included moves like the sprinkler and kangaroo-inspired hopping.

Raygun, however, had a significantly more successful turn at the 2023 WDSF Oceania Championships, where she claimed gold and raked in 1,000 points. The performance was enough to secure her the No. 1 spot on World DanceSport Federation‘s ranking list, the sport’s governing body announced this week.

Internet users were still left flummoxed by her placement, particularly given her showing in Paris, and took to social media to voice their confusion.

“Raygun ranked world number one after Paris Olympics controversy — how funny is this? World no 1???!!!” one person wrote on X.

Another added: “This crazy is just failing upwards.”

In response, the Federation issued a statement on Tuesday clarifying its ranking system. It said it considers each athlete’s best four performances over the last 12 months and that the points earned during each competition are valid for 52 weeks from the performance date.

The Olympics qualifying events in Shanghai and Budapest, as well as the Paris Games themselves are not factored into the rankings, the WSDF clarified. The federation also noted that it did not hold ranking events between Dec. 31, 2023 and the Paris Games this summer, to allow breakers “to focus solely on the last part of their Olympic qualification.”

The statement continued: “By the end of the Olympic Games, many of the competition results included in the ranking had expired, leading to the current situation where many athletes have only one competition result contributing to their ranking.”

The 37-year-old breakdancing professor addressed the backlash and global mockery in an interview that aired Wednesday on Australia’s “The Project,” during which she stood by her competitive efforts that many dubbed “cringe.”

“It was really sad how much hate that it did evoke,” said Gunn — who was named Australia’s “top-ranked” breaker last year, as well as in 2020 and 2022 — adding that while she’s “very sorry for the backlash the community has experienced,” she “can’t control how people react.”

Gunn, whose viral performance included mimicking kangaroo hops, attributed “a lot of the responses … to people not being very familiar with breaking and the diversity of approaches in breaking.”

“The energy and vitriol that people had was pretty alarming,” she said. “I wanted to bring out some Australian moves and themes. … That’s the wonderful thing about breaking. You can take inspiration from any source.”

Though she earned 0 points during her three Paris competitions, Gunn said her “record speaks to” whether she’s really Australia’s best breaker. She also denied conspiracy theories that she manipulated the selection process to qualify for the Games.

Noting that she’s largely avoided social media since and swiftly sought mental health support amid the “ups and downs” following the Games, Gunn expressed her gratitude for the “amazing” positive responses she’s also received.

Distance runner Jaryd Clifford was finishing the T13 5000m for vision-impaired athletes on Saturday when International Paralympic Committee (IPC) officials ruled he had dropped the tether linking him to guide Matt Clarke just before he crossed the finish line, People reported.

Clifford erred in releasing the tether binding him to Clarke at that “crucial moment” and breached IPC rules, the Australian athletics team management said in a statement.

“Jaryd needs guides to run these distances competitively, but it creates more margin for error and unfortunately today was a realization of that,” the Australian athletics team management said. “He has the 1500m on his program (Tuesday) and we know he will be putting all the energy and disappointment into that performance.”

His first guide was Tim Logan, to whom he was tethered for the first 2,000 meters of the race. Then Clarke replaced him for the last 3,000 meters so Clifford could maintain his pace. He was the only runner in that race using a guide.

Davul Culbert, a commentator for Australia’s Channel Nine and an Olympian in his own right, noted the rule breach as soon as it happened.

“You’ve got to hold the tether all the way through to the line, and it’s pretty clear it’s not in the hands of both athletes,” Culbert commented, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. “In fact, it looks like Jaryd’s let it go just before the line there.”

The gold medal went to Yassine Ouhdadi El Ataby of Spain, and the silver to Aleksandr Kostin of Russia, who is competing under the Neutral Paralympic Athletes association, according to People.

Clifford called the disqualification “pretty shattering” but took it in stride, vowing to go for gold at his next event Tuesday.

“I’m absolutely gutted that we made such a critical mistake today,” he wrote on X after the final ruling. “Remaining tethered is a fundamental rule of guiding, and I’m shattered that I lost my mind in those final meters. I’ve got so much more to give. I promise to bring everything for the 1500m on Tuesday.”