A photo of a man dressed in a blue and white shirt, looking into a mirror and shooting backwards, has gone viral on social media.
The claim: The photo, which shows the man standing at a venue at the 2024 Paris Olympics, has gone viral with the caption, "The Olympics has a new legend."
An archive of this post can be seen here.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
At the time of writing this report, this post by X user 'cb_doge' had gathered over 31 million views.
(Archives of more posts sharing this image can be seen here, here, here, and here.)
But...?: The image has been altered to show Thai comedian Pongsak Pongsuwan at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Pongsuwan's image has been taken from a video of a Thai television show, while the background of the photo has been taken from the actual shooting competition at the ongoing Olympics.
How did we find out the truth?: On observing the image, we saw that the borders of the man's body appeared blurry, with the words 'Paris Olympics 2024' appearing distorted near his forehead.
We noticed several distortions in the viral image.
(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)
This indicated that the viral photograph may have been altered.
We carried out a reverse image search on the viral photo using Google Lens, which led us to several posts on social media.
Under one such post on Reddit, two users pointed out that the image was "fake" and was a "poor photoshopped image (sic)."
Some Reddit users pointed out that the photo was "fake".
(Source: Reddit/Screenshot)
Commenting under the same post, another user identified the man as a "Thai comedic performer" called Theng Therdtherng.
The man was identified as a Thai performer.
(Source: Reddit/Screenshot)
On X, Thai news organisation Thai Enquirer shared a viral collage of photos showing participants and winners of shooting competitions at the Olympics.
It shared the collage with the caption, identifying the comedian as Pongsak Pongsuwan, whose stage name appears to be Theng Therdtherng.
In this collage, we noticed that the background of the viral image was identical to the photo of Turkish shooter and Olympics' silver medallist Yusuf Dikec.
Using Dikec's name as a keyword, we found a better quality image of his participation on the internet for this comparison.
The background is taken from a photo of Turkish shooting medallist Yusuf Dikec's round.
(Source: X/The Tribune India/Altered by The Quint)
Pongsuwan's image: In reply to a reposted version of the claim, one user shared the actual video of Pongsuwan shooting.
However, in this video, Pongsuwan could be seen on a stage and using a mirror to shoot at a target to the far right side of the stage.
This is a translated version of Khaosod's article.
(Source: Khaosod/Screenshot)
Using the show's name and 'Theng Therdtherng' as keywords in Thai (translated to 'ชิงร้อยชิงหรานเทิง' with Google Translate), we looked for more information.
This led us to a video on Thai television channel Workpoint's official YouTube channel, which was shared in 2019.
Titled '3 Cha Duel Gun | Ching Roi Ching Lan Wow', it carried a video of Pongsuwan performing the trick shot with a gun at the 03:10-minute mark.
You can watch the full video here.
Conclusion: An altered photo of a Thai comedian performing a trick shot on a television show has gone viral with the false claim that it shows a man competing at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
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