Bev Wake keeps an eye out for the witty, wild and plain ridiculous.

Lucky colour: Athletes can be a superstitious bunch.

For American weightlifter Morghan Whitney King, it’s about the colour of her nails. They have to be orange.

“It started in 2013 when I first went to my national competition and my sports bag was bright orange and my socks were bright orange and everything underneath was bright orange, and I’ve worn it ever since,” she said. “In 2015, I was like, ‘I am totally not superstitious. I’ll be fine — it’s only me and the weights and 2015 was a little rough for me, so I thought, ‘I’m going back.’ In 2016, in February, the junior nationals I think were the first trials and I had an amazing meet and I thought, ‘That’s it. That has to be it. It can’t be anything else’. So I’m wearing orange when I probably should be wearing red, white and blue.”

She finished sixth in Rio, so she might want to follow the lead of British dressage champion Charlotte Dujardin, who recently abandoned her superstition — probably to the relief of her closest friends.

“I used to have lucky breeches, but I ditched those about two years ago. But I literally wore them everywhere. They held every world record,” she said. At least he’s honest: Finn sailer Allan Julie, who competes for Seychelles, on why he made the switch to Finn from laser three months ago: “In laser, I was always having to diet to keep the weight down. In Finn, I can eat whatever I want.” Athletes, they’re just like us: American Missy Franklin couldn’t hide her disappointment at not making an individual swimming final in Rio, four years after winning five medals (four of them gold) in London. “It’s been a really hard year for me,” she said. Asked what she planned to do given the premature end of her meet, she said she’ll be the “team’s biggest cheerleader” for the final two days. “Then I am going to head home and spend time with my cats,” she said. “Right now my future is not warming down, but eating a Popsicle tonight — that’s all I am thinking about.”