Olympian Vows To Wear Embarrassing Outfit

Olympian Vows To Wear Embarrassing Outfit, Australian shooter Russell Mark will be the talk of the Opening Ceremony if he honors this bet.Australian shooter Russell Mark has vowed to wear a Borat-style mankini at the Opening Ceremony of the London Olympics after losing a bet on an Aussie Rules football game.

Mark, a 1996 gold medalist and 2000 silver medalist, wagered on Carlton to defeat St. Kilda in a recent game. After Carlton was defeated by four goals, the 48-year-old admitted to his lost wager on radio.

“Oh, I must’ve been intoxicated,” he joked, according to The Telegraph. “Anyway, a lot of people would think a mankini might look better than the uniform they’ve nominated for us, so I don’t know if it’s such a bad thing.”

Mark was referring to Australia’s actual Opening Ceremony uniform, which features a heavy, green jacket and generally makes Team Australia look more like real estate agents rather than athletes.

Complicating matters is that Mark is a potential flag bearer for the Australian team. He’ll be competing in his sixth Olympics and that honor is usually given to athletes with longevity or special circumstances. Of course, in this case, Mark may have both.

The mankini was popularized in the 2006 film, “Borat,” starring Sacha Baron Cohen as a clueless foreign visitor to the United States. A joke from a six-year-old movie — particularly a movie that was quoted and referenced as heavily as “Borat” — shouldn’t still be funny, but if Mark shows up to Olympic Stadium dressed in the swimsuit above, it’ll be the greatest Opening Ceremony moment since Leryn Franco.