The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Rio legacy of hope for Team GB and Brazil
Iconic Games: A rollercoaster ride that has bequeathed new optimism
For an Olympics that started under a cloud of Russian doping, threatened to get lost in a fog of organisational chaos, was shaken by some serious storms and finished under a blanket of rain clouds, Rio 2016 shone when it mattered most.
It became the hit production that did not have time for a dress rehearsal, rescued by an all-star cast night after night after night. When every major sports event is now meant to be ‘athlete-centred’ is that not what really matters?
International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach has called Rio 2016 the “iconic Games” – which might be a polite way of sidestepping the traditional requirement to say each Games has been the best, but it also happens to be true.
While the i-word has become a slightly pretentious way of saying something is good, one of its real meanings relates to the depiction of victorious athletes – and we certainly had a selection of those in Rio.
Bach rattled off his own list on Saturday – Simone Biles, Usain Bolt, Japan’s Kaori Icho, Katie Ledecky, Michael Phelps and so on – and they would figure in most discussions about the key players.
Then there was Abbey D’Agostino and Nikki Hamblin helping each other to finish the 5,000 metres after falls, Lutalo Muhammad apologising to the British public for getting only silver in the taekwondo, Wayde van Niekerk upstaging Bolt on 100m final night by obliterating Michael Johnson’s 400m record, Neymar winning Brazil’s most cherished gold in a shootout against the team that humiliated them at their World Cup two years ago and Fiji’s first Olympic medal in the first ever rugby sevens event. It is quite a list.
And all that before we start to talk about Team GB, no longer the tourists in tracksuits of my childhood but now one of sport’s “superpowers”, as UK Sport chief executive Liz Nicholl put it.
She should know. She signed the cheques for this lavishly-funded, supremely-talented and expertly-managed collection of winners.
The numbers are staggering – 67 medals, 19 different sports, second in the medal table – and everybody associated with Team GB should be rightly proud of what they achieved and the grin they have put on the face of a country that needed cheering up.
The challenge now is to translate all these trinkets into something more meaningful.
Inspiring us to become a fitter, happier, healthier nation would be an even more impressive trick than winning 11 medals in the velodrome or Mo Farah proving himself again to be the world’s greatest distance runner. And if Team GB’s bosses could share their notes with the Football Associaton, well, they can all have knighthoods.
But that is Britain’s headache, what of Rio’s?
There were more than a few times over the last few weeks when you sensed the whole operation was about to fall apart. Whether it was bullets flying through media tents (and perhaps even media buses), the diving pool turning green or the latest discovery on the shore of the sailing venue, Rio was a rickety rollercoaster ride. But it was also fun.
It was a shame more people did not come to watch the actual sport but it was good that the mosquitoes stayed away, too, and you have to acknowledge that when the Cariocas came they made quite a racket. Whether these Games will deliver even half of the legacy benefits that the city’s biggest Olympic cheerleader Mayor
Eduardo Paes has promised – and Bach has been happy to parrot – is debatable.
The best-case scenario for Rio is probably that it is back on the international tourism map, has a much better transport system than it did last year and has answered some major questions about its ability to roll with the punches.
Because this was not easy. When Rio won the bid seven years ago, Brazil was rocketing up the global economic medal table and Rio was determined to become South America’s cultural champion. The worst recession in 80 years and the resulting political turmoil lowered expectations but the organisers deserve credit for never throwing in the towel.
They now need to steel themselves for one last push, though, as a poor Paralympics next month would take the shine off what they achieved with the Olympics.