- The 23-year-old athlete imitated Monkey D. Luffy’s Gear Second pose during his entrance. Tentoglou explained the reference to reporters post-match and said, “If you know, you know,” Kotaku reported. “It’s from One Piece.”
- American shot putter Payton Otterdahl, 25, had also gone viral online for imitating Franky, another member of Luffy’s Straw Hat pirates, Comicbook reported. Not just his pose, but Otterdahl can also be seen mouthing Franky’s iconic catchphrase, “SUPER!”
- Italian athlete Massimo Stano, 29, finished his 20-kilometer (12-mile) race walk with his thumb inside his mouth — the pose Luffy does when he is about to enter Gear Third. Stano is also a fan of “One Piece,” as seen in his Instagram account.
- The show’s official Instagram account congratulated the athletes for their win at the Tokyo Games.
- The series was voted the most popular manga of all time by 33,600 people out of 150,000 in January this year.
- Cambodian American Olympic diver Jordan Windle, 22, did the fusion dance from anime “Dragon Ball Z” with fellow American diver Brandon Loschiavo, 24, at the Games.
- Takaharu Furukawa, a 36-year-old member of the Japanese men’s archer team, dropped a reference to the anime/manga “Is the order a rabbit?” while speaking to reporters, saying, “My heart feels like it’s bouncing (pyonpyon).” Anime News Network explained the reference is a line from the show’s opening song “Daydream café.”
- Chinese Taipei archer Deng Yu-Cheng, 22, became viral after a fan shared a conversation they had with the athlete, where he referenced the iconic line of Arash in “Fate/Grand Order.”
- “When you shoot off an arrow, do you say ‘I am the bone of my sword?'” the fan asks Deng, referencing Archer in “Fate/stay night,” to which he replies, “No, actually, I generally say ‘Stella!!!'”