President Barack Obama and Olympic champion McKayla Maroney sport the pose that made Maroney a viral star.
Over the weekend, a photo of President Barack Obama and Olympic gold medalist McKayla Maroney made the rounds online. The Internet, as a whole, was impressed.
Maroney, a 16-year-old world-class gymnast, became a viral photo sensation after her 2012 Olympic win, when she was photographed making a less-than-impressed face at the announcement of her silver medal win on the vault.
Thursday afternoon, Obama took on the pose, with arms crossed and lips pursed to the side and nose scrunched up, with Maroney. The L.A. Times wrote that even “Maroney was impressed” with the photo.
She told the Associated Press it was Obama’s idea to recreate the now-famous pose, a viral look that’s got a lot of fans behind it. It wasn’t long until the McKaylaIsNotImpressed Tumblr page was inserting the image into all sorts of scenes and situations.
Though Obama made a point of doing a cheeky pose with Maroney, he’s not the first U.S. president to have a photo op with an Olympic athlete. The tradition of high-profile athletes visiting the White House has gone on for decades.
Newsmax offers up five of the more memorable meetings between presidents and Olympians.
1. After her famous ankle-breaking gold medal vault, Kerri Strug met with President Bill Clinton.
2. In 1973, President Richard Nixon visited with the Soviet Women’s gymnastics team.
3. After the 1960 Olympics, gold medalist Wilma Rudolph had a sit down with president Kennedy.
4. President Ronald Reagan stood next to a lit torch with Kirk Thomas during the 1984 Olympics.
5. Gerald Ford was so concerned with America’s Olympic performance, he created a presidential commission to find the most qualified athletes. Here, he tosses a soccer ball with an Olympic athlete.
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