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Colin Jost let his fans know how he's been feeling after sustaining multiple injuries as NBC's surf correspondent in Tahiti for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
He Saturday Night Live One cast member cut his foot on the coral reefs almost immediately after arriving and later revealed he contracted a staph infection on his foot. He then woke up with an ear infection, as he called himself a “regular” at the medical tent. Now, Jost has taken to Instagram to tell worried fans how he is doing.
In the video, he admitted that the most common text message he received in the past 48 hours was: “Dude, are you okay?” followed by: “I heard your foot fell off.”
“Well, I’m actually fine and, despite what the mainstream media would have us believe, I was not ‘sent home’ from the Olympics,” he said. “NBC simply examined my foot, declared me a legal leper and exiled me here to the island of Malta.”
He joked that although Malta doesn't have “many Olympians competing this year,” it does have casinos where he could spend “the hundreds of dollars I've earned as a surf correspondent.”
“But the real reason I am in Malta is, of course, that it was the scene of ten separate outbreaks of bubonic plague,” he added. “So they thought I would fit in perfectly.”
Jost initially revealed his foot injury on the first day of the Olympics, July 26, when he posted a photo on Instagram of his severed, blood-covered toes. He jokingly wrote on the photo: “This might ruin my WikiFeet score, but I just got to Tahiti for the Olympic surfing games and the reef was excited to welcome me.”
Jost was injured after attempting to surf, when his foot caught on a piece of coral. “I was doing pretty well until the first wave and then I ended up standing on the coral reef,” Jost told NBC Sports reporter Mike Tirico shortly afterward. “Very much like the coral reef safety expert, but without coral shoes, so I got hurt a little bit.”
In another interview, Jost detailed how often he had to visit doctors in Tahiti, even mentioning that he had to be constantly on the move to prevent ants from “getting into the wounds.”
“It's a strange feeling when you're in the medical tent much more than any of the athletes,” Jost said during an interview with NBC Olympics at Night Presenter Maria Taylor said: “The medical staff at this point know my name. They are very familiar with my badge number, they know I am allergic to penicillin.”
Jost also shared that medical staff told him his “infection hasn’t improved,” before making a joke about his condition: “Why did the chicken cross the road? To peck at the staph infection on my foot.”
In addition to his staph infection, Jost explained that He also had an ear infection. and he couldn't get his feet or head wet.
“I now take three different medications, four if you include the piña coladas. My new goal is to leave here with as many infections as I have Olympic events,” he told Tirico.
