The EU Parliament Claims It Topped The Rio Medal Chart & Brexiters Are Mad

Huge congratulations to all the European winners and participants at #Rio2016, you did brilliantly! ?? pic.twitter.com/vPTjkedjXD

— European Parliament (@Europarl_EN) August 22, 2016

Of course, the tweet is stupid. Each country can only enter a maximum of 3 athletes per event, which would mean that the EU had cheated on a scale unseen since the glory days of East Germany. 

Another controversy with this seemingly innocent tweet: it usurps medal tally of the Great Britain, which as you might recall recently voted to jet out of the EU altogether. As you can imagine, there are some angry Brexiteers not 100% keen on this clear case of stolen valour.

@Europarl_EN You can leave the UK medals off that list as we in the UK are very, proud of our own achievements helped by LOTTERY FUNDING!!

— Rosie4U2CI2I (@Free2opine) August 22, 2016

@Europarl_EN you sad sad people. GBR did it not the EU

— Selincroblog (@selincroblog) August 22, 2016

Look, you might make the argument that the social media person running this account was making what we in the biz call a joke, but you’d be ignoring something profoundly important: the Olympics are not a joke. They’re not even a sporting contest. really. They’re actually a means by which people who sit at home and don’t actually play sport prosecute their geopolitical grievances.

C’mon EU. You shoulda known that.