Japanese Gymnast Reportedly Racks Up $5,000 Bill Playing Pokémon Go At The Olympics

Patrick Redford|published: Tue 2nd August, 22:57 2016

Photo credit: Matthias Schrader/ [object Object]

Kohei Uchimura is a six-time world champion gymnast, a four-time gold medalist at the Olympics, and, apparently, an aspiring Pokémon trainer. Playing Pokémon Go in different locales can be a great way to accrue a collection of new monsters, but it can also cost you severely. Uchimura reportedly played a bunch after he arrived in Brazil without and it cost him almost $5,000 in data overages.

The star gymnast only started playing after some of his teammates encouraged him to try it out. As the Kyodo Times, Uchimura never played the game before this week:

Uchimura said he downloaded the app when he touched down in Sao Paulo for pre-Olympic training camp and just like so many around the world, became instantly hooked — not knowing he didn’t have a flat rate for overseas data usage.

When Uchimura checked his bill, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

“500,000 yen...” sighed the defending six-time world champion.

Added teammate Kenzo Shirai, “He looked dead at the team meal that day.”

It all turned out well for Uchimura, as his service provider let him buy a backdated $30/day plan. Was this all a clever plot from some other team to distract Uchimura?

Probably.