Rio delivered helping hands and heart-stoppers
After what seemed like a worrying start, New Zealand came good at the Rio Olympics and returned our best medal haul.
There were superstars, stunners and slip-ups. Let’s cast an eye over a memorable fortnight.
Athlete of the Games
Mahe Drysdale. He provided the most heart-pounding moment of the Rio Olympics when he pipped Damir Martin to win the men’s single scull rowing gold.
The towering Kiwi did start his event as favourite, but he hadn’t won a world title since London 2012. He eased all concerns when plowing past Martin during the second half of the race, but just as we began to celebrate his second successive gold, the 28-year-old Croatian came surging back.
The initial reaction was that Drysdale had been pipped – but a nerve-jangling wait ended when the photo finish showed the Kiwi’s desperate surge pushed a fraction of his bow ball in front at the only moment that mattered.
At 37, Drysdale became the oldest men’s single scull Olympic champion since 1908, when Great Britain’s Harry Blackstaffe, aged 40, beat two ducks and a floating log.
Drysdale had already grabbed a place in the hearts of fellow Kiwis with his brave bronze in Beijing, then filled them with joy by winning in London. Rio added to his endearing legacy.
Biggest story
You can debate all you like about whether the attention over Nikki Hamblin’s helping hand – and that offered by Abbey D’agostino of the US – was mawkish or deserved.
But for a brief, bright spell, it took the focus off the overwhelming drive for triumph and pushed it onto a touch of humanity.
Hamblin was never going to win the women’s 5000m. She knew that as well as we did, but she was striving to be her best, and to make a final, when she and D’agostino fell.
‘‘You come into an Olympic Games and everyone wants to win, everyone wants to medal,’’ Hamblin said.
‘‘But really as disappointing as this experience is there is so much more to this than a medal. When someone asks me what happened in Rio in 20 years time, that’s my story.’’
The lasting memory of a fall in the Olympic women’s distance race was the ugliness that surrounded the Mary Decker/zola Budd incident 32 years ago.
Now a Kiwi has cast a kinder light on elite sport.
Note: While handing out plaudits, a big thumbs-up to New Zealand’s athletes for not providing a bigger story away from the field of competition.
This time, we were delighted to let the US and Australia fight out gold in that category.
Overachiever
Ranked 28th in the world, Luuka Jones used all the experience and toughness she’s developed from battling her way around the world canoe slalom circuit over the past decade to claim silver in Rio.
She was 21st in Beijing in 2008, improved to 14th in London in 2012 but a medal at her third Games still seemed a stretch. The 27-yearold from Tauranga, with limited funding, created a campaign that featured as much practice on the Rio course as she could manage, and gained her reward.
Underachiever
A tie between the men’s sevens team and the women’s double sculls rowers. Sure, the ‘‘All Black’’ sevens didn’t actually have many All Blacks – and the highestprofile one was hobbled immediately. But haven’t we always been told about what a master Sir Gordon Tietjens is in unearthing new talent and getting the best out of ‘limited’ resources? The loss to Japan was atrocious, and they never recovered.
Zoe Stevenson and Eve Macfarlane were world champions last year, and gold medal favourites, but failed to make the A final. There was plenty of kudos for coach Dick Tonks when Drysdale won, but this was his other boat and it flopped.
Most expected medal
It was the only competition Hamish Bond and Eric Murray had. Sailors Peter Burling and Blair Tuke had also put together an incredibly dominant winning run prior to Rio, but with the variables associated with the regatta – fickle wind changes, large fields, protests, body parts and fridges in the water – it seemed winning gold would be tougher for the boat with the sail than that with two oars. Hardly so – the flagbearers romped to gold. So did Lisa Carrington in the canoe sprint women’s K1 200 – she was Usain Boat. Bond and Murray don’t know how to finish second. So the gold medal gets shared between the three Kiwi entries in this category.
Biggest surprise medal
The only Rooney most Kiwi sports fans knew of prior to Rio was Wayne. Natalie changed that when she won New Zealand’s first gong of the Games, as the woman who makes Waimate rabbits and ducks suffer from severe anxiety blasted her way to silver.
Greatest joy
By the length of the pole, teenage vaulter Eliza Mccartney. Her rapid rise – ahem – in recent times saw her named as a possible medal chance, but even the ebullient Kiwi felt Tokyo would be more her time. Instead, she smiled and soared into our hearts and to Olympic bronze.
Biggest heartbreak
The men’s Black Sticks’ lastsecond defeat was crushing in every way possible. Poised to spring a massive upset win and give themselves a shot at the podium, things fell apart so rapidly there was barely time to draw breath.