Here’s Your Olympic Gold Medal. And Your Buffalo.

Everyone knows what you get when you are faster, higher or stronger than anyone else at the Olympics. A gold medal.

And if you are lucky, maybe also some money — and in some places, a buffalo or a free colonoscopy.

Pakistan has been sending athletes to the Olympics since 1948 and, before this year, had won three gold medals, all in men’s field hockey. But individual gold had been elusive. And the country had qualified only seven athletes for the 2024 Games.

One of them was the javelin thrower Arshad Nadeem, who had placed second a year ago in the World Athletics Championships and was a serious contender to win. Sure enough, he hurled the javelin 305 feet, longer than the distance between the goal lines of a football field, to set an Olympic record.

That earned him a gold medal and his moment with the Pakistani national anthem on the podium. But it also earned him a buffalo.

Nadeem’s father-in-law, Muhammad Nawaz, offered him the animal. Nadeem is from a rural part of Punjab Province, where such a gift is considered an honor.

“He could have given me five acres of land. But then I said, ‘OK, fine,’ he gave me a buffalo, that is also nice,” Nadeem said, according to The Hindustan Times.

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