THEIR MITTS ON GLORY
Canadian athletes, some wearing mittens, march into the closing ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympics in the Maracana Stadium at Rio de Janeiro on Sunday. Teenage swimmer Penny Oleksiak carried the flag for a team that won 22 medals — four more than in 201
Cariocas bid farewell to the XXXI Olympiad on Sunday by inviting thousands of Olympians to join them in a joyous carnivale dance to a samba beat on the infield of Maracana stadium moments after the Olympic flame was extinguished.
It was a deliriously jubilant finish to an Olympic Games that extolled the Rio de Janeiro’s renowned beach culture and stunning landmarks such as Sugarloaf Mountain and the Christ the Redeemer statue, which provided such a magnificent backdrop for South America’s first Olympics.
Despite Brazil’s spotty record of caring for the Amazonian rainforest and providing opportunities for people of all its backgrounds, or perhaps because of those shortcomings, the relentlessly uptempo closing ceremony emphasized all of Brazil’s natural diversity.
On a night when a foul tempest of wind and rain had 206 flags dancing a frantic jig and chilled Olympians and spectators to the bone, the athletes and the 80,000 people at the stadium did not appear to mind a bit. It was the coldest night in the past month, but the crowd and those they honoured had come to party, and so they did.
“The Rio Games will stay forever in our memories and our hearts,” said Carlos Arthur Nuzman, president of the Rio de Janeiro organizing committee. “It is a better city and a magic place.”
“Brazil, we love you,” IOC president Thomas Bach said in praising Brazil for its diversity.
But Bach — who won a fencing gold medal in Montreal in 1976 — broke with the recent practice of his predecessors and did not congratulate Brazil on having staged the most successful Games ever.
Instead he thanked Brazil for “making this miracle happen” in what he called “difficult times for all of us … These were marvellous Games in the marvellous city.”
With Brazil in the grips of a fierce economic downturn, budget shortfalls and the double whammy of constitutional and corruption crises, expectations were so low beforehand that the Rio Olympics will be remembered as a success because they were not a failure. As had been anticipated, there were huge problems filling the stands for most events, the transport system was broken from beginning to end and the venues were too spread out to develop the kind of intimacy that makes for an exceptional Olympic experience.
But the sports facilities were completed on time, met international standards and were the setting for 27 world records. It was a blessing, too, that security forces with no experience of how to deal with terrorist attacks were spared them, despite suggestions from Islamic State that the Rio Olympics might be a target.
The Rio Games were turned into something special, as they so often are, by the brilliant performances and often intensely compelling stories of the main characters — the Olympians — and by a raucous closing ceremony of bright lights and thunderous sounds that many felt had surpassed the opening ceremony on Aug. 5.
Penny Oleksiak, the lanky, emerging swimming superstar from Toronto, carried Canada’s colours into the stadium. The 16-year-old high school student was the youngest winner of an Olympic gold medal in Rio, taking the 100-metre freestyle. She also became Canada’s most decorated swimming Olympian ever, winning a silver in the 100-metre butterfly and adding bronze medals in two relay events.
When news broke Sunday that she had been chosen to be the flag-bearer, Oleksiak accepted the news as any teenager might.
“It’s been pretty fun this last week,” she said in something of an understatement about a string of performances that captured the hearts and imaginations of millions of Canadians and signalled to the swimming fraternity gathered in Rio that she could be a dominant force in the pool in Tokyo in 2020.
Despite some initial confusion, which had several hundred Canadians scrambling for 20 minutes in the rain to find seats, the team eventually found its spot under the Olympic and Brazilian flags.
Canada finished 20th in the official medal table behind countries such as the Netherlands, Hungary, Cuba and New Zealand, because those other countries won more gold medals. But Canada prefers to use another calculation, which is the total of medals won. By that measure, Canada placed 10th, winning 22 medals — four more than it won four years ago in London.
Perhaps the fairest way of all to determine national rankings may be to combine results from the Rio Games and the 2012 Sochi Winter Games. Using that calculation, Canada would place a highly respectable eighth in the world.
As the Olympic flame was extinguished in Rio, Bach invited “the youth of the world to gather in Tokyo” for the next Summer Games 205 weeks from now.
The buses will certainly run on time in Japan. Funding will not be a problem, nor will street crime. But it is doubtful that the upcoming Olympics in Japan — nor the next Winter Olympics in South Korea in 2018 — will be able to match the exuberant celebration of life that enveloped Rio for the past 17 days.