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How Do You Stack Up Against An Olympic Athlete?

Weightlifter Kazuomi Ota of Japan takes a moment after failing to lift the required weight in the men's +105kg  final in London. At 6 feet and 324 pounds, Ota is one of the largest Olympians.
Lars Baron
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Getty Images
Weightlifter Kazuomi Ota of Japan takes a moment after failing to lift the required weight in the men's +105kg final in London. At 6 feet and 324 pounds, Ota is one of the largest Olympians.

Sure, you might spend a lot of time on your couch, as you watch the Summer Olympics. And hey, maybe you've drifted a couple pounds above your fighting weight. But there's all kinds of athletes competing in London — one of them has to be around the same size as you, right?

Now you can find that out, thanks to the BBC, whose site has an interactive chart that lets you enter your height and weight — and then tells you which two Olympic athletes you most resemble.

One warning: the site does not differentiate between male and female athletes. So don't get confused if the BBC seems to be suggesting that you consider becoming the first man to play in an Olympic women's basketball game, or other unlikely "firsts."

The Summer Olympics feature more than 1,000 athletes in 32 sports, from gymnastics to weightlifting. The body types range from the heavy (judoka Ricardo Blas of Guam, at 481 pounds) to the ultralight (Japanese gymnast Asuka Teramoto, at 66 pounds).

You can enter your info by the pound or kilogram — or even stone, if you roll like that.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Bill Chappell is a writer and editor on the News Desk in the heart of NPR's newsroom in Washington, D.C.
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