| Jamaica's Usain Bolt, the greatest sprinter of all time, winning his 200m final race with ease over France's Christophe Lemaître, who received the bronze. (Wally Skalij/LA Times) |
| Americans Tianna Bartoletta, English Gardner, Tori Bowie, and Allyson Felix celebrating after winning the gold in the women's 4x100 relay (Wally Skalij/LA Times) |
Despite multiple tocsins before the games began, the Olympic events unrolled in a nearly flawless fashion, barring the weather, when and where scheduled. There was no domestic or international terrorism, and crime against visitors, which received some coverage, though it occurred, was nowhere near predicted. Outside of a few reported illnesses during the games, no athletes grew as ill as envisioned based on testing of Rio's toxic waterways. The Opening Ceremonies lacked some of the pyrotechnic dazzle of prior Olympic welcomes, but the skillful use of visual projections, coupled with Brazil's decision to highlight its rich history and diverse cultural traditions, made up for the technological squeeze. Amidst the usual display of music and dancing, historical pageantry, national chauvinism, and the parade of athletic beauty, viewers encountered the special treat of Tongan flag bearer and taekwondo participant Pita Taufotatua, shirtless and sporting a sheen of coconut oil; unsurprisingly, he created an international sensation, even if he did not win a medal a week later. Brazil's acting president, Michel Temer, earned boos opening night, but he and the country's political situation mostly remained hidden, even if intrepid local and international reporters did not slack on keeping anyone interested knowledgeable about the impeachment proceedings against elected President Dilma Rousseff.
There were a few incidents that represented cause for alarm. One example was the bullets piercing a tent at the equestrian eventing headquarters during the cross country races, though no one was injured; neither the military nor local police could ascertain or explain where the fusillade came from. A man attempting to run onto the women's marathon course was stopped before he could create havoc. There also were robberies on and around various beaches and in the athletes' village, including the theft of the Australian delegation's electronic equipment and some of its mascot-bearing shirts, right before the games began. The most outrageous imbroglio resulted not from imagined threats, however, but from lies told by American swimmer Ryan Lochte and three fellow swimming teammates, who participated early one morning in an act of vandalism at a Brazilian gas station, after which Lochte repeatedly and publicly lied about it. Claiming he and his teammates had been held up at gunpoint and stripped of their wallets and other goods, he sent a chill through the media about participants' safety. Security camera footage, scanning technology and eyewitness testimony revealed Lochte's tale to be just that. Before he could be questioned he fled the country, and now faces criminal charges.
| Multiple medal winner Simone Biles carries the US flag into the Olympic Stadium during the Closing Ceremonies (Wally Skalij/LA Times) |
The ongoing problem of doping, which had been in the news before the Olympics started, popped up occasionally. A Kyrgyzstan weightlifter was stripped of his bronze medal after tests revealed the presence of strychnine in his system, while athletes from India, Moldova, China and host Brazil were disqualified because of pre-games tests or challenges. Most in the performance enhancing drug spotlight was Russia, whose athletes on prior Olympic and world championship teams had had their reliance of PEDs exposed by a whistleblower earlier this year, and thus sent a reduced squad to Rio, yet still finished fourth in the medal total. Throughout the two week span, The 2008 host, China, finished second in total medals, and the 2012 host, the UK, though still dealing with the aftermath of its withdrawal from the European Union, finished third.
Team USA led all countries with 121 medals, including 46 golds, for which praise must go to US's women athletes, who were pacesetters in a number of sports. The first medal, a gold, of the games, came at the gun of Virginia Thrasher, who won in the women's 10m air rifle. In total, US women won 61 medals, which, if they were there own country, would have placed them fourth. Gold medalists earning praise included the women's gymnastics team, which finished their routines nearly 2 points ahead of competitors, and which included all around champion Simone Biles, who earned 5 medals in total, 4 of them gold (though hateful social media attacks on London all around gold medalist Gabby Douglas's hair and stance during the team medal ceremony marred what would been a coronation for the women tumblers); swimmer Katie Ledecky, who won three individual goals, as well as team gold; swimmer Simone Manuel, who became the first African American woman ever to win an individual Olympic gold in her sport; the US women's basketball team, which dominated, as did the US women's water polo and eight rowing team; women's freestyle wrestler Helen Maroulis, who finished first in the 117 lbs category; triathlete Gwen Jorgensen, who like all her fellow competitors deserved multiple medals for swimming in the stew of Rio's Guanabara Bay; and 165 lb boxer Claressa Shields, who repeated her pugilistic wins four years after her victory in London.
| The US men's 4x400m team, which won the gold: LaShawn Merritt, Gil Roberts, Tony McQuay, and Arman Hall (David Verburg ran in the qualifying heats as well. (NBC streaming screen capture) |
In other sports, although they did not win golds, US women still made a mark. New Jersey-based fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad became the first woman ever to compete in Olympic fencing wearing a hijab. She and her teammates would go on to win a bronze in team sabre competition. US cyclist Sarah Hammer won a silver in the women's omnium race, an event I'd never watched before but found enthralling, and Alise Post won a silver in the women's cycling BMX race, which was as wild and rugged as it promised. In some cases, US women's teams or athletes who had dominated in prior years faced stiffer competition this year, but still took home medals; this was the case for the US women's beach volleyball duo, indoor volleyball team, and some of the swimmers, though in the pool the US women and men repeatedly set the pace. (And yes, Michael Phelps, that natatory Methuselah, won two individual goals, one silver, and three relay golds, in his fourth straight Olympics, to raise his all-time total to an astonishing 23 gold medals, three silvers, and two bronzes, making him the most decorated Olympic athlete ever.)
In track and field, the US women shone like supernovas. Dalilah Muhammad became the first US woman ever to win the 400m hurdles, and her teammate Ashley Spencer earned bronze. In the 100m hurdles, Brianna Rollins, Nia Ali, and Kristi Castlin swept all three medals. The 4x100m and 4x400m teams also won, with the former successfully protesting interference during a heat, which required them to re-run the race all by themselves on the track. They produced the fastest time among the semifinalists. US women won on the field, and their victory in the relay finale allowed Allyson Felix to win her 9th track and field medal, tying her with Jamaican sprinter Merlene Ottey, while also handing her the sixth and most gold medals of any competing women track athlete in history. On the opening night of the track events, Michelle Carter became the first American woman ever to win the gold in the women's shot put (and followed in the footsteps of her father, Michael Carter, a silver medalist in the same event at the LA Olympics in 1984). A few days later, in the women's long jump, Tianna Bartoletta and Brittney Reese finished first and second. Where they did not win gold, the American women nabbed silvers and bronzes in a number of events (100m, 400m, pole vault, 1500m, etc.).
| US swimmer Katie Ledecky, outpacing the field in her 800m race, in which she set a new world record. (Robert Gauthier/LA Times) |
There were many great stories across a number of the competitions, perhaps beginning with host Brazil's Rafaela Silva, a native of the local favelas and an out lesbian, who received her country's first gold of the games in judo. Silva had competed in London, lost and received a bombardment of racist hate online, causing her to fall into a deep depression. She fortunately did not give up hope or determination, and ended up anchoring the 19 medals Brazil ultimately won. Another remarkable local story was that of Bahian canoer Isaquias Queiroz, known to Brazilians as "Sem Rim" (Without a Kidney). Queiroz won 3 medals, two silvers and a bronze, despite competing with only one kidney, and having triumphed over near-death three times, which included being kidnapped and trafficked and falling hard on a rock, splitting one of his kidneys in half, before he was 10 years old. Brazilians also won golds in the pole vault, women's volleyball, men's beach volleyball, boxing, sailing, and, to national relief, men's soccer. To make it even sweeter, they defeated Germany, which had humiliated their hosts 7-1 in an elimination match at the 2014 World Cup.
| USA's Kevin Durant and Jimmy Butler celebrate after winning the gold medal match. (Wally Skalij/LA Times) |
Puerto Rico, facing one of the greatest social and economic trials in its recent history, was able to celebrate tennis player Mónica Puig, who defeated a raft of highly ranked competitors to take the women's individual gold medal, her country's sole prize in Rio. In the first Olympic appearance of rugby sevens, one of my favorites this time around, Fiji, which also won no other medals, finished first, with the inventor of the game, the UK, taking the silver, and a spunky South African side winning bronze. A black Ukrainian* Greco-Roman wrestler, Zhan Beleniuk, took the silver in the men's 85 kg competition. There was also the moving story of the Independent Olympic Athletes, who competed under no flag; one, Fehaid Aldeehani, won gold in the men's shooting double trap competition, while another, Abdullah Alrashidi, took bronze in men's skeet. Also moving was witnessing what might have been the final Olympic appearance of former gold medal winner Venus Williams, who did not advance in the individual competition or in doubles with her sister Serena, fresh off her Wimbledon victory, but did win a silver medal with mixed-doubles partner Rajeev Ram, losing to another US pair, Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Jack Sock.
(*Who knew there were black people in Ukraine? And they don't have an easy time of it, unsurprisingly.)
These games featured 53 out LGBTQ athletes, the most ever. Some, like British diver Tom Daley and US basketball star Brittney Griner, were famous as out gay pathblazers. Others, like her teammate Elena Delle Dona, came out publicly right before heading to Rio. 47% of the out gay athletes actually earned medals, and several, including British boxer Nicola Adams, won gold. Still others, who were not out, however, were nearly exposed, with dangerous consequences, when a British Daily Beast reporter decided to masquerade as a gay man, trawl for hookups, and then wrote a snarky, homophobic article that gave clues to the closeted and DL men he had connected with. After being widely denounced, he publicly apologized, and was eventually recalled home early.
***
When Rio and Brazil won the opportunity to host the games eight years ago, the region's and nation's economies appeared to be on the upswing. Two economically vibrant, though corruption-ridden terms by Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, Brazil's first Leftist president since its return to democracy, led to the easy election of his chosen successor, Dilma Rousseff, a former revolutionary turned technocrat, and under both, Brazil saw a sizable increase in its middle and working classes, aided in part by "Bolsa Familia" and other programs that Lula, Dilma and their Congressional allies implemented. The Olympics, like the 2014 FIFA World Cup tournament, held across Brazil, were to be crowning events to Brazil's ascension to the first rank of the global community.
Though Brazil's leaders, and admittedly a great many people all over the world, including the US administration of George W. Bush, did not fully grasp what was underway, the ground, however, was about to fall out beneath them. 2007 through 2009 marked the worst of the global financial crisis and recession, which Brazil initially weathered, but the collapse of commodity prices, inadequate monetary policies, and Rousseff's and the Brazilian Congress's failure to trim spending--not slash, but readjust--sent Brazil careening towards a cliff off which it has since plunged. Inflation and now deflation, fiscal contraction, and a dense and intricate tapestry of corruption investigations, ensnaring politicians and business people from the acting president down to local officials, are today's baselines across South America's largest economy.
| Brazilian canoeists Erlon de Souza and Isaquias Queiroz, after their silver medal race in the 1000m pairs |
None of this boded well for a country, state and city that had agreed to spend billions to host the Olympics, which are a financial drain even under the best of circumstances. In the run-up to the Rio games, the governor of Rio State, facing a funding emergency, even appealed to the nation for money; the state, he claimed, was unable to pay for basic services, and needed help even finishing the Olympic projects underway. Additionally, right before the games started, policemen protested with signs warning visitors about the tenuousness of their safety, saying they were entering "Hell." In response, Rio and Brasília found a bit more money, and the city was able to deploy 85,000 security officers, who included federal military service people. Questions arise about what will happen now that the Olympics--and soon the Paralympics--have ended. Where will the funds for Rio State's necessary expenditures come from now? And what effect did the redeployment of military officials have on crime in locales away from the Olympic events? Given the horrendous pre-Olympics track record of police murdering Brazil's poor, particular Afro-Brazilian youth, how will these empowered state forces interact with Rio's impoverished communities once the international media are gone?
Rio's mayor Eduardo Paeswas quite pleased, however, with how things turned out. A member of the centrist-conservative PMDB party, home also to acting president Temer, Paes has stated that the Olympics allowed Rio to push through infrastructure projects that would have taken decades or which would never have been realized otherwise. The new subway line to the city's southern edges, the enhanced network of bus lanes and routes, and the Olympic Village itself are among the projects that Paes can tout as proof that Rio dig gain something beyond fourteen days of visitors, exciting races and bouts, and international attention. In fact, the Olympics' apparent success will probably serve as the launching pad for Paes' presidential run, after a year's sabbatical at Columbia University though he may need to switch parties (as he's done repeatedly) if Temer and other PMDB politicians remain deeply unpopular. That most of these new structures, facilities and renovated areas will primarily benefit Rio's wealthiest residents and future tourists far more than the majority of the city's working class and poor was part of his and other organizers' vision.
| Ukrainian wrestler Zhan Beleniuk (NBC Streaming screen capture) |
Rio's experience is only the most recent example of the International Olympic Committee's flawed approach to staging games that, at this point, very few countries can afford. For two weeks of athletic competition--providing thrills for viewers, a bit of pride for participating countries, future employment for physicians, chiropractors, and physical therapists, and new entries for the record books--host nations are expected to indebt themselves. In the case of the UK and China, the strain was great but not insurmountable; with Russia and the Sochi Winter Games, we may not learn for years what this exacted on the host nation's still staggering economy, or its politics and society, though it did give Vladimir Putin an electoral boost. As the host 30 years ago, Montreal, could attest, however, along with more recent host Athens, sometimes the costs are too high to bear.
| US freestyle wrestler Helen Maroulis, winning the gold medal by defeating Japan's Saori Yoshida in the women's freestyle 53kg final. (Robert Gauthier/LA Times) |
Perhaps the answer is not to end the Olympics, despite their long history of cozying up to anti-democratic autocrats and greedy corporations, but rather to figure out another approach that will aid the cause of athletic, cultural and global engagement. One option I have seen suggested is to distribute the games across the globe, using sites already built; a virtual Olympics seems eminently doable. Countries with team handball arenas can vie for those contests; baseball, if it returns, could be staged in nations that play it. More people would be able to attend Olympic events as a result, and rather than having to build billions of dollars of new facilities, countries could spend far less to upgrade existing ones, but only if needed.
Another option that I also saw suggested recently would be to have a given country that agrees to host the Olympics do so for several repeated cycles. So Rio would again host the Olympics in 2020 and 2024. Or perhaps in round robin fashion. This does eliminate the challenge of a new country building all new facilities every four years, but it does not address the large-scale costs that the host would have to bear over a dozen years. Not only would Rio or any country have to keep the facilities it built open and functioning optimally for twelve years, but it would again have to find money for security, further extensive infrastructure upgrades, and so on.
| US gymnast Danell Leyva, in his silver medal performance on the men's horizontal bar final. (Robert Gauthier/LA Times) |
| Rio Olympic Village, with the nearly completely razed Vila Autódromo immediately to its left |