If you have any sort of online or news-related presence, you may have already seen this week’s sad headline: the 2020 Summer Olympics are officially over.
Tokyo 2020’s closing ceremonies took place on Sunday evening (early Sunday morning in the U.S.), complete with fireworks, flag-bearers and very little in-person fanfare, marking the end of one of the most unusual installments of the Games we’ve ever seen.
While it’s impossible to recap all 1,080 medals given out over the last two weeks in a column of readable length, here are some notable highlights:
• The U.S. won 39 gold medals in Tokyo, clinching the gold-medal title for the third straight Games and beating out China (38) by a single gold. The U.S. snatched the title on the Games’ final day, winning three golds on Sunday to China’s zero, including the Americans’ final gold in women’s volleyball (a 3-0 victory over Brazil).
• The U.S. also took home the most total medals this year with 113 (39 gold, 41 silver, 33 bronze), marking the seventh straight Games that Team USA has claimed the title.
• There were 37 athletes that won multiple gold medals, including seven Americans — Caeleb Dressel (5, swimming), Katie Ledecky (2, swimming), Zach Apple (2, swimming), Robert Finke (2, swimming), Sydney McLaughlin (2, track & field), Athing Mu (2, track & field) and Blake Pieroni (2, swimming).
• Speaking of Dressel, he emerged as Team USA’s newest Michael Phelps-esque athlete, vacuuming up five gold medals in five events and setting four records — three Olympic, one World — in the process. He’ll have to do it a couple more times to reach Phelps’ Mount Olympus-level heights, however, as Phelps accomplished the five-gold feat in three separate Games, including his mind-boggling eight golds won (out of eight events) at Beijing 2008.
• Team USA gymnast — and certified G.O.A.T. — Simone Biles helped continue the conversation surrounding athletes’ mental health after bowing out of all but one of her individual events (a bronze-medal win in the women’s balance beam), following in the footsteps of Japan’s Naomi Osaka, who spearheaded the discussion at both the French Open and Wimbledon earlier this year.
• American Allyson Felix won a gold medal in the women’s 4x400 meter final, accounting for her 11th Olympic gold, surpassing Carl Lewis for the most track & field gold medals by a U.S. athlete.
• As rocky as things seemed pre-Olympics, Team USA Basketball swept the competition as the men, women and 3x3 women all won gold medals at Tokyo 2020, with Latvia being the only other nation to win a basketball gold (in the men’s 3x3, which the U.S. didn’t qualify for).
All of those moments happened in front of the smallest at-home audience from the U.S. since Seoul 1988, with NBCUniversal, the Olympics’ lone television host, announcing over the weekend that the Games pulled in an average of 15.5 million viewers per night.
There are a couple of possible contributors to the less-than-stellar ratings, including (1) NBC’s confusing coverage that spanned a wide number of channels and streaming platforms, making it hard for the average viewer to find the sports they wanted to watch, and (2) the 13-hour time difference between New York and Tokyo, making live events tough to catch.
The lack of in-person spectators — they were banned from attending the Games after a spike in COVID-19 cases led to a state of emergency in Tokyo — also factored into this Olympics’ unusual flavor.
Nevertheless, it’s always sad to see another Olympics come and go, knowing we’ll have to wait another three years to see skateboarding and synchronized swimming — two very similar events — together again in Paris 2024.
However, I’m sure you’ve heard the very popular saying — which I most definitely didn’t make up while writing this — that when an international door closes, a local one opens.
While the Olympics came to an end on Sunday, it won’t be long before we get our sports fix once again.
On top of the Little League World Series coming up, NBA Summer League ongoing and plenty of MLB action every day, the NCHSAA fall sports season begins next Monday. It’s the day we’ve all been waiting for.
Chatham Central, Chatham Charter, Jordan-Matthews, Northwood, Seaforth and Woods Charter are all in action next week, meaning we’ll soon get a look at the new facilities at Seaforth, the always exciting men’s soccer program at J-M and the talented cross country team at Northwood, among many, many others.
Despite the athletics-induced coma that we all fell into this past winter/spring with every sport being crammed into a few-month span, I’m officially ready to do it again. A month and a half off is just a little too long.
So whether you’re a Bear, Knight, Jet, Charger, Hawk or Wolf, it’s time to turn off NBC, set down your remote that’s suffered plenty of wear-and-tear from switching back and forth from water polo to badminton and head out to your local high school to cheer on and support the student-athletes that have worked so hard this summer to get ready for fall.
I promise it’s worth it.
Reporter Victor Hensley can be reached at vhensley@chathamnr.com or on Twitter at @Frezeal33.