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Belgian Olympic marathoner breaks down in tears of disbelief upon hearing she finished 28th

38-year-old Mieke Gorissen had only been training for three years and the Olympics was just her third marathon.

Imagine deciding to take up a hobby that usually requires many years to perfect at age 35, and three years later ending up in the top 30 in the world at the highest international competition for it.

That's what happened to a 38-year-old math and physics teacher from Diepenbeek, Belgium. According to Netherlands News Live, Mieke Gorissen has jogged 10km (a little over six miles) a few times a week for exercise for many years. But in 2018, she decided to hire a running trainer to improve her technique. As it turned out, she was a bit of a natural at distance running.

Three years later, Gorissen found herself running her third marathon. But not just any old marathon (as if there were such a thing)—the marathon at the Tokyo Olympics. And not only did she compete with the world's most elite group of runners, she came in 28th out of the 88 competing in the race.

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Poland's Piotr Malachowski is one of the world's top discus throwers.

He has a solid Olympic record. He won a silver medal in Beijing during the 2008 games, and is also the proud owner of the fifth-longest discus throw ever: 71.84 meters (FYI, that's really far).

But at the Rio Olympics, the competition was intense. If Malachowski wanted to take home a medal, it would be one of the biggest challenges of his life.

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One of Jordin Andrade's earliest memories was watching his uncle Henry run in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

Henry also played in the NFL briefly, but for 4-year-old Jordin, the Olympics was much more exciting. Because even though he was born in the U.S., Uncle Henry was one of four athletes on the first ever Olympic team from Cape Verde, a small island nation 300 miles off the west coast of Africa with a population of about 500,000 people. (It's also known as the Republic of Cabo Verde.)

The Andrade family — including Jordin's father, Joe — immigrated to the United States from Cape Verde in 1960, just two years before Uncle Henry was born. "This is an opportunity to represent me, my family, my people and my country," Henry told the L.A. Times that year. "Cape Verde is so small and so poor. The place needs a lot of giving."

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Ellis Hill had never driven his Uber across the river before.

Ellis Hill (right) and Liz Willock. Photo by Ellis Hill and Liz Willock/GoFundMe.

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