Call him, maybe? Russian snowboarder Alexey Sobolev didn't get an Olympic medal out of his performance in the slopestyle qualifiers on Thursday, Feb. 6, but he did get something else — thousands of somethings, in fact. The 22-year-old athlete was bombarded with texts after he competed in his event with his cellphone number printed on his helmet, a stunt that made him the talk of Sochi.
By Friday, Sobolev told the Associated Press, he had received more than 2,000 messages. According to Yahoo Sports, his phone was so inundated with new content that it just stopped working at one point.
"Most of the messages are good luck messages and messages from the girls," he told the AP. "Some of the messages are not appropriate to read aloud."
He also received several racy photos. "I've got a collection of pictures," Sobolev told a USA Today reporter. "It's really boring in the Olympic Village, you know?"
That's certainly not the case anymore. "I'm definitely going to call them," Yahoo quoted him as saying.
Sobolev also made headlines last week for his snowboard, which featured an illustration of a woman in a red ski mask. Some interpreted the graphic as an homage to the punk rock protest group Pussy Riot, but StepChild Snowboards, which made the board, said any resemblance is just a coincidence.
"We support human rights and being able to say whatever the f–k you want, but we did not intend the 14/15 Kam Knife to be a political statement," a message on the company's website read. "It's just a chick in a balaclava with a knife. Nothing more."
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