Forget about gold medals. The most coveted item at the 2024 Olympics is this chocolate muffin—and we’ve discovered where to get it.
What goes on inside the Olympic Village has been behind closed doors for as long as we can remember. That was until TikTok came along. The Paris 2024 Games have seen athletes take to social media to give us a look at goings-on that were once shrouded in mystique. Cardboard beds were the talk of the town; Olympians walking into the Village like it’s the set of Love Island. But when it comes to virality, there has been one clear victor: a chocolate muffin.
Specifically, the chocolate ganache muffins being served up in the Olympic boulangerie and consumed by hungry athletes in the Village cafeteria. One man is to blame for the current muffin frenzy you’ve no doubt seen on your TikTok For You Page: Norwegian swimmer Henrik Christiansen, who’s representing his country in the 800m and 1500m freestyle. It’s no secret that the food provided in the Olympic Village is, well, lacklustre—at least based on reviews from the athletes themselves—so when Christiansen took to TikTok to declare his love for the chocolate muffins, it exploded. “The single greatest thing about the Olympic Village so far,” he stated—a superlative not to be taken lightly.
What started out as one post turned into a series of videos, and before long, it was an international phenomenon. Fellow Olympians, including Gabrielle Thomas from Team USA and Quah Jing Wen for Team Singapore, have chimed in to the conversation with reviews of their own. Thomas scored the muffin a 9.8/10 in her own personal review, while Quah held back. “You don’t want to steal them from that one Norwegian swimmer.” In the days since, Christiansen has dubbed himself the “Official Olympic Muffin Man”—clearly, a title that bestows more esteem than simply, “Olympian”, or whatever the reason all these athletes are in Paris for.
Of course, the higher you climb, the farther you have to fall. It was Christiansen’s Norwegian teammate, Jon Jøntvedt, who first implied that Christiansen was two-timing his chocolate muffin, posting a video of the swimmer brazenly eating a non-muffin pastry. “I guess the Olympic Muffin Man is a traitor after all,” he wrote. Christiansen went on to address the allegations, and formally apologise for his infidelity. Whether the chocolate muffin will forgive him is yet to be seen.
You might be wondering: do I have to be an Olympian to get a sweet, sweet taste of this chocolate muffin? The answer, delightfully, is no. Internet sleuths identified the treat as the Maxi Muffin with Intense Chocolate, manufactured by French company Coup de Pates—and they’re available for order. “We knew our Maxi Muffin with Intense Chocolate was something special,” the catering company wrote on Instagram, “but we didn’t expect it to spark such a chocolate storm! Thank you all for the love.” On the other hand, if you’d like to whip up your own chocolate storm at home, an abundance of recipes have also surfaced online.
If you’re looking to have a bite, though, we’d advise adding a few to cart as soon as possible. There’s a high risk that Christiansen will place a bulk order the moment he leaves the Olympic Village.