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Colin Jost let fans know how he’s been holding up after receiving multiple injuries as NBC’s surfing correspondent in Tahiti for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The Saturday Night Live cast member cut his foot on the coral reefs almost immediately upon arrival, and went on to reveal that he got a staph infection in his foot. He later woke up with an ear infection, as he called himself a “regular” at the medical tent. Now, Jost has turned to Instagram to tell fans worried about him how he’s doing.
In the video, he admitted that the most common text message he’s received within the last 48 hours is, “Dude, are you OK?” with the follow-up message: “Heard your foot fell off.”
“Well, I’m actually fine, and despite what big media conspiracies would have you believe, I wasn’t ‘sent home’ from the Olympics,” he said. “NBC simply looked at my foot, declared me legally a leper, and exiled me here, to the island of Malta!”
He joked that although Malta doesn’t have “many Olympians competing this year,” it does have casinos where he could spend “the hundreds of dollars I’ve earned as a surfing correspondent.”
“But the real reason I’m in Malta, of course, is because it was the site of 10 separate bubonic plague outbreaks,” he added. “So, they thought I would fit right in.”
Jost initially revealed his foot injury on the first day of the Olympics on July 26, when he posted a photo on Instagram of his cut-up toes covered in blood. He jokingly captioned the photo: “This might ruin my WikiFeet score but I just arrived in Tahiti for the surfing Olympics and the reef was excited to greet me.”
He received the injury after attempting to go surfing himself when his foot caught on a piece of coral. “I did pretty well until the first wave and then I ended up standing on the coral reef,” Jost told NBC Sportsreporter Mike Tirico soon after. “Much like the coral reef safety expert but without coral shoes on, so I got a little scraped up.”
In another interview, Jost detailed how often he had to visit doctors in Tahiti, even mentioning that he had to be constantly moving to avoid ants “crawling inside the wounds.”
“It’s a weird feeling when you’re in the medical tent way more than any of the athletes,” Jost said during an interview with NBC Olympics Late Night host Maria Taylor. “The medical staff at this point, they know my name. They’re very familiar with my badge ID number, they know I’m allergic to penicillin.”
Jost also shared that medical staff told him his “infection hasn’t improved,” before he made a joke about his condition: “Why did the chicken cross the road? To peck at the staph infection in my foot.”
In addition to his staph infection, Jost explained that he also had an ear infection and could not get his feet or head wet.
“I’m now on three different medications – four if you include pina coladas. My new goal is to leave here with as many infections as there are Olympic events,” he told Tirico.
