Conclusion: Paris Olympics - Summer 2024

Gold Medalists Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Tara Davis-Woodhall

It's been a ride!  

I've always paid attention to the Olympics, but I'd describe the approach at League HQ this go-round as "laser focused".  We took off, I think, only one or two nights to do other things, but still caught what we were trying to catch via replay.

Here, at the end of more than 14 days of sport - 16 days from open to close, plus preliminary rounds - I feel a bit like a kid at the end of camp.  It's a brief, intense experience, and you want to hang onto the vibe.  But part of that vibe is knowing:  be happy it happened v. being sad it ended.  I don't think I could live in a world where the sport I was watching was interrupted by diving coverage for 45 unwanted minutes every day.*

But, wow, in addition to the fun of yelling at people racing on my screen and marveling at what people from around our crazy globe can do, I am filled with wonder that we'd all much rather play Badminton together than pick up a gun because of some tariff dispute or disagreement over a 2000 year old book...  

The pettier commentators will try to frame the Olympics as a zero sum war of nations - not sporting competition among athletes.  And those people are somehow missing the big picture.  As a planet, we don't do much together.  We have a barely functioning UN and aside from sharing memes, we mostly don't find ways or reasons to put people side-by-side from Algeria, Japan, Australia, Bulgaria and Iceland.  But at the Olympics, we've found common denominator in sport.  

Yeah, you have to name winners - this is still sport after all.  I'll spend a huge amount of this post talking who won medals for the US.  But the focus on which country has more gold medals, and the tone that suggests we're moving some front lines of battle back and forth, makes me kind of bummed out.  No one will remember or care in a year if China has more medals than the US, or if Australia has two dozen - or if it was actually three dozen?  What we'll remember is the panoply of nations who came to the games and some individual matches, games, etc...

I know - easy to say when your country has been running off with a bucket-ton of medals for a few decades.  But I mean it!

So I'll celebrate achievement, but I don't like to think of it as some defeat when getting to the Olympics is nearly impossible.  And achievement by one team shouldn't be taking anything from another country.

US Women's Soccer Forward Mallory Swanson scores to win Gold

US Women's Medals

I read that the US Women accounted for 67 of the 126 medals.  That's pretty good news for women in sports in the US.  I don't know *exactly* how that's counted, but I know US women were medaling in Rugby, gymnastics, track, swimming, artistic swimming and all over the place.  

Further, ESPN reported that 65% of our Gold medals were won by women, with 26 total.  

There's all sorts of things at play here, but it's an impressive stat.  And as a Title IX supporter, I think shows some of the benefit of the policy.

Track and Field

Like I said previously, I am all in on the US Track and Field.  And there's so many great athletes that to name a few is to forget a few.  But the US won 34 separate medals.  34!

• Men's Events
• Women's Events
• Mixed Events

The 4x400 for both Men's and Women's were absolutely mind-blowing, with the US just going nuts and winning by great margins.  And the women's 4x100 was an absolute blast (that last minute push by Sha'Carri Richardson is one for the record books.

byyyeeeeee

Noah Lyles won Gold in the 100, but was suffering from COVID for the 200m, and still won Bronze.  I was lucky to make it upstairs when I had COVID.  But we also saw fulfillment of hopes for folks like Quincy Hall, Grant Holloway and Rai Benjamin - with a shocker from the US in the 1500, 5000 and 10,000.

Women honestly had too many legends to name, and we've covered some, like Gabby Thomas. But lest we forget Valarie Allman on discus, Masia Russell on hurdles, Tara Davis-Woodhall on Long Jump, and Anna Cockrell fetching a close Silver on 400m hurdles in pursuit of McLaughlin-Lavrone's Gold - I mean, this team was nuts.

Anyway, with folks like Lyles, Thomas, Richardon and McLaughlin-Levrone - this team is one we'll be talking about for decades.

Soccer

US Men's soccer is still a mess, but USWNT won GOLD.  We have tickets to see the USWNT here in October, and I am so psyched.

Basketball

Two great final games.  Phenomenal teams from the US.  It's going to be a while before US Men's assembles another Dream Team like the one this year.  But watch out for coming years from the US Women, who are now at a 61 game winning streak in the Olympics (although this one was an absolute nail-biter).

Breaking

The Olympics have long had Exhibition sports - things they try out.  The name one this year was Breaking (aka for you older folks - Breakdancing).  I had mixed feelings watching it.  It's absolutely athletic and takes skill.  But so does Tap and Jazz.  Are we looking at a Fosse medaling sport by 2080?  I wouldn't complain - I'm just asking questions.

I don't think it was helped that the Breaker who went viral was a 36 year old college prof researching Breaking as a cultural phenomenon who fulfilled Rizzo's prophecy to Sandy in Grease by actually doing The Kangaroo Bop.  (oh, yes, Steven, I am aware of Raygun.)

Anyway, I am sure if people shout enough, LA will put some cardboard down and we'll see Breaking in LA in four years.  Along with baseball, softball, cricket, squash and lacrosse.

Trouble in Paris-dise

Maybe I mentioned it before, but Paris did a (mostly) remarkable job of hosting.  

Buuut...   Just so you don't think this is all a pro-Paris fluff piece, some of the known issues have been:

• They didn't quite clean up the Seine, and they still made athletes swim in the water.  And, y'all, that's sewage.  Science only takes us so far.  There's a difference between "our numbers look right" and "oh, there goes poop" and the inevitable "and yet, our swimmers keep falling ill after diving in".  And, indeed, it seems swimmers did get sick.  This was a massive and known issue, and often when you throw money at problems, they do go away.  But maybe not this one.  I wanted it to go great! It did not.

• The best of intentions and a dollop of wide-eyed idealism seem to have had an adverse affect on athletes in the Olympic village.  Paris was trying to lead by example and incorporate eco-friendly practices - and maybe put ideals over sensibility.  A few reports:
• the dorms were un-air-conditioned, and temps were in the 90's for some of the days.  I mean, honestly.  Just call Lennox and see if they want some great publicity.
• The food was a problem.  
• Apparently they went for "sustainability", rather than consulting with dieticians used to working with the world's greatest athletes.  So, apparently, the initial offerings were very vegetable friendly/ heavy - but that's like offering greens to a tiger.  You don't get to decide the caloric intake of athletes or if they need heaping piles of protein or not - and swapping meat for beans at the @#$%ing Olympics is a terrible idea.
• There were also complaints about the quality of the food, from the taste to one infamous report (with no receipts) of worms in the fish.

The US seems to have imported AC units for their athletes and a variety of work-arounds occurred for food (they are in Paris, not the wastelands of the Gobi).  

And some athletes chose not to swim in ye olde Seine.  

A final note:  the fantastic gymnastics competition of 2024 is going to be forever marred by the poor management of the judging.  Look, I know I just said that medals aren't the point - but they're also a real factor for the athletes if not for us at home.  And the confusion around the floor routine, stripping Jordan Chiles of her medal and screwing over Romanian gymnast Ana Barbosu in the first place - is a terrible look.  And should have been handled then and there, instead of rushing to a medal ceremony.  There's a world in which the judges take a mulligan, admit they did a terrible job, give out two (or even three) Bronze medals and call it a day, and nothing is lost.  The sport and Olympics are not made better because of your clerical errors and snotty attitude.

Is This The New Olympics?

last time I was at a party that looked like this, I didn't get up til 2:00 PM the next day

I do think this will be the Olympics that breaks the model.  The vast majority of the events took place in existing structures (more than 90%), so construction was barely an issue, and the dorms will become affordable housing (note the lack of A/C).  

The Opening along the Seine and to the foot of the Eiffel Tower was great, breaking up the program and making it about the Olympians, France and the coming excitement.  And it had a variety of great moments.  

The opening ceremony will be impossible to replicate in any American city, let alone LA, which has nothing like a river or central area where they can really showcase architecture, history, etc...  I guess they can show the Hollywood sign and Griffith Observatory.  But sweet Christ, NBC, don't go all in on Jimmy Fallon.  He's the guy your friend hangs out with that you don't really like, but your friend thinks you share interests so they keep bringing him around without asking.

More than that - maybe because Tokyo 2021 was so weird in the middle of COVID - the Paris Olympics looks less like a choreographed herding of people for television and more like a festival, and that ain't bad.  When the athletes are continually stating how into it the audiences are, that's pretty great.  

US Men's Gymnastics take the Bronze!

Nonetheless, the gauntlet is thrown and now LA has to step up.  And, to be honest, while I largely found the closing fine-to-good, I found the decision to turn the LA part into a promo for Mission Impossible kind of dumb, and the beach party so kind of obvious and trite (and oddly cheap compared to what London and Paris did) it's a little disconcerting.  But the only thing that surprises me about it is that they went for the most bone-headedly obvious transition possible - right down to turning the Hollywood sign into Olympic rings.  

And now my thought is that the LA Olympics coverage is going to be mostly about spotting Adam Sandler in the stands and catching Jennie Garth for her opinion on how that Badminton game went.

But, yeah, the Closing Ceremonies were a bit beholden to the old formula, and the promise of a big party, and that's fine.  I enjoyed it enough.  And it was a technical marvel from all perspectives, minus NBC botching the audio from time to time and including Fallon.

Anyway

I had a great two weeks.  Volleyball.  Basketball.  Fencing.  Breaking.  Judo.  Sport Climbing.  Track.  Field.  Soccer.  Table Tennis.  Swimming.  Gymnastics.  Kayak.  Rowing.  Equestrian.  Artistic Swimming.  Rhythmic Gymnastics.  

I saw the US give a platform to all kinds of people, and see amazing feats both individual and team.  I saw runners make up distances that seemed literally impossible.  I saw people scale walls in seconds.  

Next up, I'm gonna try to keep the ball rolling with some Paralympics.  

I will also miss having a nightly fix of Maria Taylor on my screen.

*look, diving is boring and handled badly on TV.  I literally care more about pretty much every other sport more than I care about diving, which has the vibe of "Mom!  Mom!  Look!  Look at me!  I'm diving!"  Unless you're Mexico.  Then it's cool.  Show Mexico.