Was Thomas Jolly, "the artist who created the Olympics opening ceremony," hospitalized after being hit by lightning? No, that's not true: The viral claim was based on a fake screenshot of a nonexistent AP article. Lead Stories found no actual news reports or any evidence that such a lightning strike happened.
The claim appeared in a reel on Facebook on August 8, 2024. It said:
The artist who created theOlympics opening ceremonythat mocked God washospitalized after a 'freaklightning strike.' 'Do not bedeceived: God is not to bemocked. Whatever a manows, he will reap.' (Gal. 6:7)
This is what the reel looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Aug 20 14:43:57 2024 UTC)
A TinEye reverse image search showed that the person seen in the video on Facebook was Thomas Jolly and that the photo first appeared online on July 20, 2024 -- one day after it was taken and six days before the 2024 Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony, as one description (archived here) on a stock image library specified.
Two years before that, he was appointed (archived here) the artistic director of the Games.
There was no announcement of injury on Jolly's Instagram and posts continued after July 31, 2024.
A search across thousands of news websites indexed by Google News for the keywords seen here (archived here) related to the purported lightning incident only produced links to two fact checks.
One of the earliest English-language examples of the claim first spotted by Sportskeeda appeared on TikTok on July 30, 2024. In that video (archived here), a bearded man in a Trump 2024 red hat claimed that some "local station out of Paris" was the source of the "news."
Lead Stories searched across Google News for the keywords in French seen here (archived here) narrowed down to the reports published that month, which generated zero matches.
The image seen in the background of the video on TikTok featured the same photo of Jolly as the post that is the focus of this fact check. However, it also contained what appeared to imitate a news article's headline that read:
Artist behind the Paris Olympics OpeningCeremony Hospitalised After Freak LightningStrike.
That was a cropped version of a fake screenshot of a nonexistent AP report widely shared on social media across platforms and languages, including meme websites, for example here (archived here).
A Google search across the Associated Press' website for the keywords seen here (archived here) confirmed that the supposed article was not there as of this writing.
A broad Google search (archived here) for the specific wording used in the purported headline didn't show any credible media organizations reporting anything similar -- it led back to the meme website.
True Media (archived here) and DeepFake-o-Meter showed some signs indicating that the screenshot was digitally manipulated.
In reality, the AP published a news report featuring the photo of Jolly just below the headline on August 2, 2024 (archived here), and the real title of the piece was different. It read:
Police investigating hate speech targeting Olympics opening ceremony artistic director Thomas Jolly.
According to MythDetector, the claim circulated among Russian- and Georgian-speaking social media users in addition to English-speaking populations.
Neither Sportskeeda nor MythDetector nor the Radio France Internationale (RFI) found anything suggesting that the claim was grounded in facts.
Lead Stories contacted Jolly and the Olympic press team for additional comments. If we get a response, this article will be updated as appropriate.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about the 2024 Paris Summer Games can be found here. Stories about sports are here.
