Finishing a marathon is a huge achievement — no matter how many feathers you’ve got. A duck found that out when it took home a medal and runner’s bib after an impressive performance at a recent race for children in New York.
While you might expect a duck to be better suited for a competitive swimming event than a run, this waterfowl proved all doubters to be quacks by waddling the entire course from start to finish. It may sound like the plot out of a feel-good children’s book, it really happened — and thankfully there’s video of this (webbed) feat.
In a short clip that has gone viral, you can see the duck’s remarkable trek, including her dramatic wing-flapping approach to the finish line at the 2022 Long Island Marathon Weekend’s 1K Kids Run. After the race, the bird is treated to a little cup of water and then presented with a special medal and numbered bib.
On May 5, the video was posted on Reddit to the r/MadeMeSmile page, which hosts wholesome posts from across the internet. It earned a whopping 201,000 upvotes in less than a week and earned more than 400 awards from other users.
In case this performance left any doubts, it turns out the duck is no amateur in competitive running. Wrinkle the duck is actually something of a celebrity in the bird world, with nearly 600,000 followers on Instagram!
Wrinkle stole headlines in 2021 for running in the New York City Marathon while wearing a pair of specially made webbed running shoes, launching the fowl to stardom. Eagle-eyed viewers noticed the shoes were back in the duck’s most recent run.
Canadian Running reported that Wrinkle finished the course in 18:08, which was declared a “world duck record.”
The little athlete’s run was so enlightening that it even inspired a Reddit user named u/SchnoodleDoodleDo to compose a poem from Wrinkle’s point of view on the day of the big race.
Someone needs to get that duck a FitBit!
This story originally appeared on Simplemost. Checkout Simplemost for additional stories.
