Andy Murray Has Priceless Story About Hunting Down Niche Country Pin at Olympics

Kristen Wong | Jul 29, 2024

Amber Searls-USA TODAY Sports

When Andy Murray retires from tennis this summer, he can look back and marvel at his glittering trove of titles, trophies and niche Olympic pins.

The three-time Grand Slam champion plans to call it quits after his fifth and final Olympics in Paris, where he’s currently competing in the doubles competition alongside compatriot Dan Evans. Amid his pursuit for more silverware, Murray is also apparently on an awesome side quest to collect Olympic pins from the smallest, most obscure countries at the Games.

Former British tennis player Laura Robson told a priceless story about how Murray was running around the Olympic village trying to hunt down a pin from Liechtenstein this week.

“He’s taking [collecting pins] seriously,” Robson said on Monday. “He didn’t do it in 2012 but then followed it up, Rio and Tokyo [he] went hard. In the athletes’ village, he’s trying to find the most niche country, the smallest country. His one for this week was—there’s one athlete from Liechtenstein, and he was searching the village high and low to try and find this poor man. He tracked him down, and he’s got it, and it was like he’d won the Olympic gold. Honestly, he came in and was showing everyone like, ‘Look what I’ve got!’” 

Andy Murray might have the 𝐛𝐢𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐬𝐭 collection of Olympic pin badges 😅@SportsOrla | @laurarobson5 | @andy_murray | #Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/9ckxK18MQd

— Eurosport (@eurosport) July 29, 2024

Romano Puentener, who’s competing in men’s mountain biking, is Liechtenstein’s sole representative at the Games.

Murray, the only man in history to win two Olympic singles gold medals, withdrew from the singles competition in Paris last week. He nearly saw his career come to an end in the first round of men’s doubles on Sunday, but he and Evans pulled off an epic comeback to defeat Japan’s Taro Daniel and Kei Nishikori, saving five match points en route to winning a third-set tiebreak.