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Sochi Olympics week one: 5 athletes who have won hearts

A few Team USA athletes sparked global attention by things other than their Olympic prowess (though that helped too). Here are five Olympians who caught our eye this week.

5. Johnny Quinn

Johnny Quinn, right, prepares for the start of the men's bobsled training with partner Nick Cunninghan on Friday, Feb. 14.

US bobsledder Johnny Quinn shot to fame days before the bobsled competition got underway in the Sochi Olympics by smashing his way through a jammed bathroom door in his Krasnaya Polyana hotel. The escape earned him thousands of new fans and added a torrent of media interviews to his already-busy schedule in the run-up to bobsledding events this weekend.  

Quinn posted a photo of the still-locked door with a gaping hole through it on Twitter on Feb. 8. “With no phone to call for help, I used my bobsled push training to break out,” he wrote.

In the week that followed, his post has been re-tweeted almost 30,000 times, earning Quinn such humorous monikers as the Games’ biggest “breakout” star and the “Twitter darling of the Sochi Olympics” – as well as an invitation to train with a Texas-based SWAT team.

To be fair, the door appeared to have never been a match for Quinn’s brawn in the first place. From what one can tell from Quinn’s picture, it appears to be made of corrugated cardboard covered by thin paper-like panels. 

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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