Rio not the best Olympics ever
WHEN IOC president Thomas Bach closes Rio 2016 tonight, he will stop short of calling it “the best Games ever”. That phrase has virtually become the norm at recent Olympics, as the governing body pulls out every piece of political correctness in the book to appease the hosts.
There have been some standout individual achievements.
Michael Phelps confirmed his status as the greatest Olympian of all time when he won another five gold medals and a silver to take his tally to 23 gold and 28 medals in total. This time, he vowed, that’s it. Unlike the years after London 2012, he has retired and won’t be returning.
Katie Ledecky, Phelps’ teammate, dominated the longer women’s freestyle races, winning three golds and breaking two world records in the process.
Simone Biles announced herself as possibly the greatest gymnast ever with some gasping displays, which saw her win four golds and a bronze medal.
On the track, Usain Bolt signed off his Olympic career with another extraordinary 100/200m double, for a third successive Games. The greatest showman in athletics has left the building. In doing so, he’s handed over to Wayde van Niekerk, who produced a staggering solo race to win 400m gold and break Michael Johnson’s 17-year record time.
Then there was Caster Semenya. And the Ethiopian Almaz Ayana, whose 10 000m world record obliterated the 23-year-old mark sent by Wang Junxia. These were all extraordinary individual displays and worthy of the international press they received. Anyone who witnessed any of those feats live will be privileged to know they were watching history unfold.
However, it’s not just the individual heroics that make for “the best Games ever”.
And Rio’s deliverance of the Olympics will have the bigwigs in the IOC pausing before deciding to award the “greatest show on earth” to a city in a developing, cash-strapped country, with widespread government corruption.
Rio’s population – and there is visible, abject poverty in this Brazilian city – didn’t embrace the Games like London’s did four years ago, just by way of comparison. There were plenty of occasions when you travelled off the beaten track that you might not know that an Olympics was taking place. Young kids riding bicycles up and down dusty streets at night, adults making their way home after long days at work, seemed disinterested in the Games. The attendances at many of the events were appallingly low. Obviously, there were exceptions, but the sight of an equestrian competition watched by virtually no-one against a backdrop of poverty seemed at odds with reality.
There were countless petty crimes, many of them in the tourist Copacabana beach area, especially after dark, although not uncommon in daylight hours. Such is the “acceptance” of crime in Rio, that the star American swimmer, Ryan Lochte, and a couple of mates, shockingly fabricated a story to say they were held up and robbed at gunpoint.
The world believed their story, because it’s entirely believable in Rio. However, CCTV footage