Athlete has very unexpected response after losing wedding ring forever during Olympics

This year's Olympics is the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to weird and wonderful stories - and with one Olympian losing his wedding ring in the Seine river, nothing shocks us anymore.

Gianmarco Tamberi, an Italian high jumper, was flag waving for Italy when the catastrophe happened.

The 32-year-old Olympian, who also holds the current title of World Champion, lost his wedding band during the opening ceremony on 26 July.

Tamberi has since offered a profuse apology to his wife, Chiara Bontempi Tamberi.

Taking to Instagram to do the grovelling, he wrote: "I'm sorry my love, I'm so sorry."

(Silvia Lore/Getty Images)

He continued: "Too much water, too many kilograms lost in the past few months or maybe the uncontrollable enthusiasm of what we were doing.

“Probably all three things, just the fact that I heard it, I saw it fly... I followed her with a glance until I saw her bouncing inside the boat.

"A Glimmer of Hope... But unfortunately the bounce was in the wrong direction and floating more than a thousand times in the air I saw her dive into the water like that was the only place she wanted to be."

He went on to add: “A few moments that lasted an eternity. But if it was meant to happen, if I'm really going to lose this faith, I couldn't imagine a better place.

"It will stay forever in the riverbed of the city of love, flown away while I tried to carry the Italian tricolor as high as possible during the opening ceremony of the most important sporting event in the world.

(Massimo Valicchia/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

"If I had to invent an apology I would never have been this imaginative. I think there might be a huge poetic side to yesterday’s misdeed, and if you want, we’ll throw yours into that river, too, so they'll be together forever, and we'll have one more excuse to, like you've always asked, renew our vows and get married to new.”

Swooning - he managed to turn tragedy into a moment of high romance - in front of the world.

It isn't the only beautiful thing to have emerged from this year's Olympics.

Yesterday (29 July), Egyptian fencer Nada Hafez revealed to the world that she was seven months pregnant while competing.

In her Instagram statement, she included the following admission: "What appears to you as two players on the podium, they were actually three! It was me, my competitor, & my yet-to-come to our world, little baby!"