A top Twitter trend this afternoon is 'Gaylord Silly'. Say what? Mr. Silly is a Seychellois runner competing in the World Indoors Athletics Championships in Istanbul. This morning he broke his country's 800m record but still failed to qualify for the next round of his competition, coming in behind four other runners. But the name has struck a chord and, somewhat inevitably, there now seems to be a Gaylord Silly fan club on Facebook.
But this is not the first time that the little republic in the Indian Ocean has produced an exotically and amusingly named athlete. The IAAF website tells us that over 20 years ago, Silly's homeland was represented by a hurdler who rejoiced in the name Giovanny Fanny and who failed to make much of an impression at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona.
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