【单选题】

When he won his third gold medal at his third successive Olympic Games, we______the man as if he were the greatest athlete we had ever seen: a superman, ______ , a demigod walking the earth.

A、hymned … a nonpareil
B、exasperated … a dabbler
C、inveighed … a genius
D、lauded … an obscurantist
E、apostatized … a commoner