单项选择题

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