Athlete on highway to shell

He won gold at the Rio Olympics, but US sprinter David Verburg ran a very different race last week. The champion runner, who won the 4×400m relay at the 2016 Rio Olympics, published a video of himself saving a tortoise stranded on the middle of a busy motorway.

Verburg was driving in Florida when he saw the stricken animal.

He pulled over and ran into the busy road to grab the reptile.

“My shoes were untied and loose, so as I started running, I thought, ‘This is a terrible idea,’ but I had already started,” Verburg said. “It happens all the time in Florida.”

Kindly Verburg later released the animal in a nearby patch of wilderness.