A STAR-SPANGLED FAREWELL TO BRAZIL
Spring gymnast Biles carries flag at Closing Ceremony for one of most decorated U.S. teams in history
RIO DE JANEIRO — Having helped carry the women of USA Gymnastics to a record-breaking performance, Simone Biles closed the 2016 Summer Olympics by carrying the Stars and Stripes into rainy, windy Maracana Stadium, wrapping up a memorable month in the life of a great American athlete.
Home to the greats of the Brazilian national soccer team, the Maracana is a place for champions. That means it’s a place for Biles, 19, of Spring, who with five medals, including four golds, will join Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky among names for which the first Olympics held in South America will be remembered.
Dwarfed at 4 feet 8 by the ninefoot flag staff and the 23-squarefoot flag, which together weighed about 2.5 pounds, Biles was among 206 flag bearers that lined the floor of the stadium as Olympic athletes walked past them, celebrating despite steady rain and wind, on their final night together in Rio.
Being selected as flag bearer was, she said earlier Sunday, another highlight in what has been a series of remarkable days that included winning a team gold with her “Final Five” teammates, and all-around gold plus two individual golds and one bronze.
“Every single day is like a dream come true,” she said.
With her five medals, Biles certainly belongs among the group of athletes that Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, described as an Olympics that were “iconic in many respects.”
“We arrived in Brazil as your guests,” he told the crowd that braved a chilly, wet night to attend
the Closing Ceremony. “We depart as your friends.”
They were also on occasion ironic, as in the chemical treatment faux pas that turned the water in the diving and water polo pools a patriotic sheen of green, matching the Brazilian flag.
And they were occasionally idiotic, highlighted in that respect by the return to the 21st century of an old 20th-century bugaboo — swimmer Ryan Lochte in the role of the Ugly American.
But when the Games are remembered, chances are the likes of Biles, Phelps, Ledecky and the other champions of the past 16 days will linger more securely than plumbing mishaps or a 32year old bleached blonde behaving badly.
For the United States, there are ample champions to celebrate. The U.S. totaled 121 medals, including 46 golds, to lead all countries in both categories. Joining Biles on that gold medal list from Houston are Brittney Griner (women’s basketball), Simone Manuel (two gold medals in swimming), DeAndre Jordan and Jimmy Butler (men’s basketball) and Kerron Clement (men’s track and field).
Plenty of medals
It was the most medals won by a U.S. team in a non-boycotted Olympics, although the Rio Games took place without the entire Russian track team and Russian athletes in other sports in the wake of a report that revealed a wholesale system of state-sponsored doping in Russia.
The Rio Games avoided most of the potential pitfalls suggested prior to the Opening Ceremony, including the prospect of a Zika virus outbreak in the dead of South America’s winter.
However, the Games were not without problems. Ticket sales were slow, volunteers did not show up for work, increasing the stress in those who did show, and organizers were unable to live up to promises to improve the city’s water quality.
David Wallechinsky, the longtime Olympic historian and author, said the IOC also failed to take a sufficiently hard line against what he described as the “really shocking” evidence of Russian state-sponsored doping. That, he said, will be an ongoing issue for the Olympic movement, and Wallechinsky said there will be more revelations to come.
“I thought the Paralympic Committee showed more guts than the IOC in banning the entire Russian team,” he said. “I think in the months to come, there will be more (doping revelations). This has hurt the IOC in the short term, but in the long term it may help them if they take the (calls for reform) seriously.”
He said the venues were good and athletes were treated well, adding, “The Brazilian people are so wonderful.” But he said transportation shortfalls and organizational mishaps made it difficult for visitors.
On to South Korea
Now the Olympic Games move to South Korea (in 2018), Japan (2020) and China (2022), where the level of organization is likely to be significantly improved. And the IOC continues to reap the benefits of cities that are bidding to host the Olympics, including Los Angeles’ bid for 2024, and on Sunday launched a new Olympic Channel digital network.
The Games also failed to capture the audience that NBC officials expected for what was essentially a live Olympics, two hours ahead of Central Daylight Time. But the network said the 15 days of full competition averaged 27.5 million viewers on cable, network TV and digital, the second-best ever for a non-domestic Summer Olympics.