Welcome to the final Olympics daily briefing of 2016. It’s the final one because the Olympics have finished, but here are two glimmers to drag you out of your sports-deprived gloom: the Paralympics start on 7 September, and here below is everything* worth remembering about the Games.
[*Yes, I know I’ve forgotten your favourite moment. That’s what the comments are for.]
The big picture
Rio was thrilled to be hosting the Games; then not many people turned up to watch them; then the football gold and a beach volleyball win went Brazil’s way and the firecrackers came out again. And now life goes on for the people of Rio, much as it did before.
Jamaican and general all-round favourite Usain Bolt won and won and won to take his triple treble (not triple triple or three-peat, if you please), and also finished in a dead heat with himself for image of the Games. Was it this?
Or this?
Elaine Thompson made it another Jamaican double with her wins in the women’s 100m and 200m.
The diving pool went green, but there was nothing to worry about: it definitely wasn’t urine. And that sewage-soaked sailing bay? Fine, as long as you keep your mouth shut. Lack of wind meant sailors weren’t at much risk of tipping in anyway.
Also at no risk of sinking, despite the heavy metals clanking round his neck, was Michael Phelps, retiring – probably – from his fifth Games with five more golds and a wallflower silver to take his record tally to 23 golds, three silvers and two bronzes. Add in the celestial Simone Biles (four gymnastic golds, one bronze), and the pair carried off almost one-fifth of Team USA’s 46 golds between them.
Just as greedy were the British track cycling team, every one of whom won a medal. How did they do it, panted left-behind rivals. Here comes the science part. Also: money.
A fistful of countries got their hands on Olympic golds for the first time: Singapore’s Joseph Schooling held off Phelps for his; Vietnam, Puerto Rico, Kosovo, Jordan and Fiji joined the ranks too.
South African swimmer Chad Le Clos tried some mind trickery but was seen off by the Phelps face. More successful were his compatriots on the track: Caster Semenya, who bent back the finger-pointers with her win in the women’s 800m, and Wayde van Niekerk, who stylishly crashed through Michael Johnson’s 17-year world record in the men’s 400m.
And the podium of controversies? The booing of French pole vaulter Renaud Lavillenie as local hero Thiago Braz da Silva boinged his way to gold has to be on there, but pipped by the boxing judging row (succinctly precised by Irish boxer Michael Conlan: “They’re fucking cheats”), and Shaunae Miller’s legal but startling dive across the line to deny Allyson Felix 400m gold.
Least fun was had by Russia, denied a track and field team after systematic doping, fourth in the medal table nonetheless, but on the end of some pointed criticisms for Yulia Efimova’s success in the pool, its boxers’ efforts in the ring and, well, generally.
But China runs it close in the dissatisfaction stakes: “the worst Olympic flop” scolded state media as the national team finished a lowly … third.
The most politically charged moment of the Games was very 2016: South Korea’s Lee Eun-ju’s selfie with gymnastics competitor Hong Un-jong of North Korea.
And the special award for lack of sportsmanship goes to Ryan Lochte and his three partners in time-wasting for what the swimmer called “shenanigans” and the Brazilian police called vandalism and false testimony.
Your final day catch-up:
- Cheers, boos and a carnival atmosphere as flame goes out on Rio Olympics.
- Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge powers to marathon gold.
- Britain’s Joe Joyce denied Olympic super-heavyweight gold medal.
- Nikki Hamblin and Abbey D’Agostino receive award for sportsmanship for helping each other to finish race after falling.
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Mongolian officials strip in protest after wrestler loses Olympic bronze.
Team GB roundup
Two was the magic number: second in the overall medal table; two more golds for the unbeatable last-lap kick of Mo Farah; two for gymnast Max Whitlock and for cyclist Laura Trott; and 2012 doublings-up for Andy Murray, boxer Nicola Adams, Jade Jones in taekwondo, triathlete Alistair Brownlee, Charlotte Dujardin (and horse Valegro), rowers Heather Stanning and Helen Glover, and Trott and Farah again. The men’s rowers took two golds, in the four and the eight.
Second has more painful connotations for Lutalo Muhammad, who dropped to silver with a kick in the head – it’s taekwondo, it’s allowed – in the final, well, second. And for Jessica Ennis-Hill, who ended just 35 points off a heptathlon double gold, but took her second place with pride and praise for her vanquisher, Belgium’s Nafissatou Thiam.
Jason Kenny (despite the bonus point for remembering to bring his bag for life) mucked up the pattern with his three cycling golds, but that’s doubled his overall haul to six, so this tortured motif still works. Ruining it completely is Bradley Wiggins, a 2016 gold hoisting him to the status of the most decorated British Olympian of all time: eight medals, five of them of the best variety. Katherine Grainger followed suit to become the most decorated British woman, a silver in the women’s double sculls powering her to five medals from five Games.
In a generously-medalled Games, there was room for some firsts, too. Getting Team GB on to the gold medal list was Adam Peaty in the 100m breaststroke. The women’s hockey team clinched two firsts: a breakthrough gold and the first same-sex married couple (Kate and Helen Richardson-Walsh) to win alongside each other. Nick Skelton won his first individual equestrian gold at the age of 58. Sixteen-year-old Amy Tinkler won her first medal – and Britain’s first for a woman on the gymnastics floor – with a bronze she called “crazy”.
Justin Rose took the first gold since golf was invited back to the party. Sailors Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark, and Giles Scott, won their first golds before they even crossed the finishing line. Jazz Carlin was GB’s first double medallist in Rio, with two swimming silvers. Liam Heath won his first gold in a kayak, Joe Clarke his first in a canoe (yes, they’re different). In the first Olympic outing for rugby sevens, Britain came second, but nobody could mind because gold belonged to Fiji.
Britain’s most successful Olympic diver twisted to a gold and a silver, and we learned that his name was Jack Laugher and not Tom Daley. We also learned – and then some immediately forgot – the existence of Daley’s diving partner, Dan Goodfellow. In the interests of non-hypocrisy let’s add Laugher’s gold-winning synchroniser, Chris Mears, here.
Total: 27 gold + 23 silver + 17 bronze = 67 medals and 2nd place overall.
Team USA roundup
So, yes, America won. A weighty 121 medals, eclipsing China’s 70 and Britain’s 67 with almost embarrassing ease. Will Team USA miss Phelps in 2020? Given he had a – flipper-sized – hand in just six of the 33 swimming medals won in Rio, they’ll probably get by. After all, there’s still Katie Ledecky (aged 19, four golds, one silver), Simone Manuel (20, two golds, two silvers, already a history-maker), Lilly King (19, two golds), Ryan Murphy (21, three golds) and, oh, too many others to list. It’s a pity the names of Ryan Lochte and co could prove the more memorable.
Team USA was a lap ahead of anyone else in the athletics stadium too, with 32 medals, 13 of them gold, and two of those belonging to Allyson Felix, now the most decorated athlete in US track and field history. A one-two-three for Brianna Rollins, Nia Ali and Kristi Castlin in the women’s 100m hurdles was verging on boasting. Justin Gatlin came into the stadium to boos and left with one silver, in what must surely be his final Games.
Wins in the men’s and women’s basketball were utterly expected. Defeat in the women’s beach volleyball and football, and early departures for Venus and Serena Williams (as well as golds for the athletically geriatric Kristin Armstrong and Anthony Ervin) were not.
But even the absolutely predictable can be unbelievably beautiful, as Simone Biles and the rest of her final five proved over and over and upside down and over in the women’s gymnastics. Online attacks on Gabby Douglas showed the uglier side.
Total: 46 gold + 37 silver + 38 bronze = 121 medals and 1st place overall.
Australia team roundup
The lesson from Rio? Australian sport has for so long punched above its weight that it needs to learn to play with kids its own (population) size. Is 10th place overall so bad when the nations above it have populations of Greco-Roman wrestling proportions to Australia’s mere 23 million? But still, the prediction of 13-16 golds was a shot that went way over the bar.
Of those that did make the scoreboard, 18-year-old Kyle Chalmers’ 100m freestyle swimming gold was the most screamed-about; Chloe Esposito’s modern pentathlon win the most hang-on-WHAT-how incredible; and the women’s rugby sevens triumph the most expected.
Mack Horton also grabbed gold in the men’s 400m freestyle but made more of a splash with his comments on “drug cheat” runner-up Sun Yang, previously banned for a doping offence. China’s measured response? “Australia is … a country at the fringes of civilization,” sniffed state newspaper the Global Times. Horton should be “killed by a local kangaroo”, hyperbolised one Chinese netizen.
Further golds for trap shooter Catherine Skinner, rower Kim Brennan, sailor Tom Burton and the women’s 4x100m relay swimmers helped keep chef de mission Kitty Chiller from un-chilling. But the “naughty nine” with their dodgily-stickered accreditation for the men’s basketball (perhaps we shouldn’t mention the Boomers) and Emma McKeon and Josh Palmer’s late nights out, didn’t help to warm up what Chiller called the “toughest Games ever”.
And it was, probably, goodbye to Anna Meares, but not before another cycling bronze medal placed her firmly among the greatest Australian Olympians. Hers will be a tough saddle to fill.
Total: 8 gold + 11 silver + 10 bronze = 29 medals and 10th place overall.
Picture of the day
Why yes, that is Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe dressed as Super Mario at the closing ceremony. Just 1,432 days until Tokyo 2020 and there’ll be no plumbing issues there. And the stadium will be made of Tetris blocks.
Diary
Nothing. The traffic queues for the airport might be the only timing issue.
Tweet of the day
This mural in #Rio2016 commemorating #TeamRefugees will live on long after the athletes + the media have left pic.twitter.com/cV4UxILvzQ
— TeamRefugees (@TeamRefugees) August 22, 2016
If today were a song
It would be Roy Orbison: It’s Over. But oh, what will you do?
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