RIO PULLS IT OFF
Despite a laundry list of concerns, the Olympic Games were anything but a sporting disaster, columnist Christine Brennan writes.
On a dark and RIO DE JANEIRO stormy night, a surprising success story wrote its final chapter. The much-maligned 2016 Rio Olympic Games closed with color, song — and a huge sigh of relief.
It’s the sports upset we didn’t see coming. Rio pulled it off. Who thought we’d be able to say that? Never before had we seen a city with such a laundry list of problems going into an Olympics: Zika, water pollution, street crime, economic recession, political upheaval and infrastructure worries.
So, what happened? There was mysterious green water in the diving well and water polo pool and a media bus was attacked by rocks (or was it gunshots?), but Rio was anything but a sporting disaster.
Perhaps we all just “overexaggerated” the problems. Ryan Lochte’s new word turns out to be a useful catch-all. The 32-yearold American swimmer did his best to commandeer these Games in their second week with his drunken boorishness and arrogant lies, but these Games were too resilient and bounced back with a grand finale of a weekend.
Five hours before the closing ceremony Sunday, in a small, leafy square 10 miles from the Olympic Park, fireworks suddenly exploded. Cheers from a few open windows filled the afternoon air. Then came shouts from a restaurant and a coffee shop. A few taxis honked their horns.
What had just happened? The Olympics would end in a few hours, but before they did, the Brazil men’s volleyball team swept Italy to win the gold medal. A day earlier, the men’s soccer team won its first Olympic gold medal, on penalty kicks, beating Germany.
Happiness on top of happiness. Who says these Games weren’t a success? Not that tiny seaside corner of Rio.
It was reminiscent of how the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics ended, with the Canadian men’s ice hockey team defeating the USA for the gold medal. Losing that game would have ruined those Olympics for millions of Canadians. And so it was with Brazil’s final flurry of gold as well.
But the conversation with Rio was always going to be about so much more than sports. Everywhere athletes went, they knew they would not be talking simply about what they came here to do.
“Every Olympics has its own set of issues,” said Meghan Musnicki, a member of the U.S. gold medal-winning eight rowing team, which competed in the most-discussed water on the planet.
“Everywhere you go, to every big event, they’re going to create or talk about the issues that are being presented. Very clearly, it didn’t affect what we did. So that’s kind of the moral of the story. Yeah, you’re going to deal with issues. As far as what we were focusing on and what we were thinking about, the water quality and Zika and whatever was really in the back of our mind. We were being cautious and taking precautions and here we are with our Olympic medal, so I think it worked out OK for us.”
Her teammate, Emily Regan, when asked what she thought of how things were going in Rio, shouted out a grade. “A-plus!” Didn’t expect to hear that from the rowers, did we?
These Games will be remembered mostly for the conversations they fostered: the ethics of allowing athletes from Russia’s doping machine to compete here, and the boos that accompanied them; the inclusion of a refugee team; the behavior of young athletes in foreign lands, on and off the field of play.
Oh, and Bolt, Phelps, Biles, Ledecky and U.S. women’s teams.
“Obviously there were a few challenges along the way,” said Larry Probst, chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee, which oversaw the biggest medal haul yet again, “but overall I think these have been terrific Games.”
It turned out we had nothing to worry about.