A high jump gold medal, shared. A sequel to the wrestling match of the century. The most decorated U.S. track and field athlete ever. A seven-medal swimmer. Historic gold in women’s volleyball. Double U.S. gold in golf. And a sudden dialogue about mental health that might outlast all of it.
And that’s just the start of what happened.
The Olympics…still mattered.
Despite everything. Despite a full year’s delay. Despite deep financial losses. Despite a persistent health crisis that made a host nation rightfully wary, provoked calls for its cancellation, eliminated fans and deprived the event much of its crowded, human joy.
The Olympics again proved to be a durable feast. Tokyo 2020—technically Tokyo 2021, the grandchildren of the future will be corrected—managed to become something both recognizable and memorable.
This is also the problem, of course. The durability of the Games is why they’re so resistant to change, so often plagued by waste and excess and rife with the kind of institutional stubbornness that causes organizers to think they can…well, plow through a pandemic.
Organizers can’t claim victory yet. Cases in Japan are surging, passing 10,000 daily late last week, and while officials maintain no connection between the Olympics and the rise in positives, it’s worrisome.
But the Games? The Games persist.
The list of stirring moments is too long to do justice. A warning in advance: I’ll name a few here, and for every one I get, I’m going to miss a dozen. The Olympics are an avalanche of achievement, unmatched by anything else in sports, and it’s impossible to hit everything. To those I miss, my profound apologies. It’s tough to get it all.
But let’s start from the end, which matched the end in Rio five years ago: Eliud Kipchoge, the Kenyan with a claim to the best marathoner ever, surging from the pack and gloriously going off alone to win his second gold over 26.2 miles.
The day before, Kipchoge’s countrywomen, Peres Jepchirchir and Brigid Kosgei, took gold and silver in the women’s marathon, and the revelation was Wisconsin’s Molly Seidel, a former cross-country All-American at Notre Dame who won bronze in her third marathon ever.
Seidel was an Olympic surprise, and there were lots of those at these delayed games, for which rising talent got an extra year to sharpen. There was Alaska’s Lydia Jacoby, winner of breaststroke gold at age 17. There was Lamont Marcell Jacobs, of Italy by way of El Paso, triumphant in the men’s 100 meters. Maybe the biggest stunner was the winner of the women’s cycling road race: Austria’s Anna Kiesenhofer, not an active professional cyclist, but a moonlighting mathematics Ph.D.
Then there were the heavy favorites, who delivered as expected, perhaps the most merciless form of pressure. There was world-record holder Mondo Duplantis—repping Sweden via Louisiana—soaringly triumphant in the men’s pole vault. There was the U.S. swimmer Caeleb Dressel, taking all that “Next Phelps” hype and and exiting with five golds. There was Katie Ledecky continuing to be Katie Ledecky, a category unto herself, but now with a worthy rival: Australia’s Ariarne Titmus.
There were presumed golds for Team USA in women’s and men’s basketball, too—that’s five gold medals apiece for Huskies Diana Taurasi and Sue Bird, as well as an exclamation point gold for a Kevin Durant-led men’s team that struggled early and had sports radio on Schadenfreude alert.
(The Olympics are funny in the way success immediately airbrushes the strain. A decade from now—or three weeks from now—we’ll look at that men’s basketball gold and assume it was another Naismith nation cakewalk, and forget the month or so when the entire internet decided Gregg Popovich had forgotten how to coach basketball.)
Elsewhere, did you see:
Gold medals in golf for Xander Schauffele and Nelly Korda? The 23-year-old Korda is the first to win a golf major (the Women’s PGA championship) and gold in the same year.
What about skeet shooting gold for U.S. Army 1st Lt. Amber English?
Or the wrestling golds won by Gable Stevenson, a Minnesotan named for wrestling royalty, and Tamyra Mensah-Stock, a Texan who pledged to use her prize money to help her mom launch a food truck business?
Or the hard-fought silver for “Captain America” Kyle Snyder after another epic battle versus the “Russian Tank,” the Russian Olympic Committee’s Abdulrashid Sadulaev?
Or the gold for San Diego-raised cyclist Jennifer Valente in the women’s omnium?
Or the electric 1-2 in the men’s 400 meter hurdles with Norway’s Karsten Warholm and the U.S.’s Rai Benjamin, who both smashed the prior world record?
Or the astonishing week for Sifan Hassan, a refugee from Ethiopia who moved at 15 to the Netherlands—golds in the women’s 5,000 and 10,000 meters, and bronze in the 1,500.
There’s no way you saw all of it. It’s hopeless to keep up, even if you’re a Jedi master of time zones and NBC’s sprawl of digital coverage. The Olympics start in a ceremony and turn into a deluge.
Certain moments become indelible, however. Australia’s Emma McKeon collected seven medals, the first female swimmer to do that in a single Games. New Jersey’s Athing Mu, 19, announced herself as the track sensation of the present and future with golden performances in the women’s 800 meters and the 4×400 relay. Mu’s teammate, Allyson Felix, shared gold in that relay, and added a bronze in the 400 meters, surpassing Carl Lewis as the most decorated U.S. track and field Olympian ever.
Then there was Simone Biles, expected to be The Sensation of these Games, suddenly stepping aside amid mental distress, turning into Team USA’s cheerleader No. 1 before rallying to take a bronze medal in her final competition. Her Olympics will be remembered for provoking an overdue conversation about mental health in sports. It also cleared a path for gymnastics talent like Suni Lee, who took gold in the women’s all-around, and launched a glorious watch party celebration in her Minnesota hometown.
I haven’t gotten everything, I know. I’ve surely missed a bunch.
But let’s end here, with that shared gold in the high jump, between Qatar’s Mutaz Barshim and Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi. I was in the stadium that night, and in the moment, it was difficult to tell exactly what was happening—there was a huddled conversation near the jump bar with an official, and then Tamberi flopped to the ground in disbelief as Barshim erupted in joy.
They’d split it. After multiple failed attempts to out jump each other, Barshim and Tamberi turned to an old rule that allows medal sharing acceptable by mutual agreement.
They’d both won.
And that, in a flash, was what makes the Olympic Games so singular—an instant lesson in sportsmanship and goodwill that will outlive both victors and everyone who saw it. It’s why this event survives, despite its excesses and arrogance.
The Olympics, as a business, need reform, desperately.
But the Games? The Games are alright.
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