the.com/medalist

Proof you were the best on the one day someone was watching with a stopwatch.

means Someone who has won a medal in a competition, especially in sports.

from Built from 'medal' plus the agent suffix '-ist,' marking someone who does or holds the thing. 'Medal' itself traces back through French 'médaille' to Italian 'medaglia,' probably rooted in Latin 'metallum' (metal) — so at bottom, a medalist is, quite literally, a 'metal person.'

bronze irony
third place still beats everyone who did not compete
etymology
from medal, from Latin metallum, meaning metal
shelf life
olympic medalists get introduced that way forever after
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