Of The Golden Stars Of Rio – And Those Who Made All Medals Shine Brighter

Who was the biggest star of the 2016 Olympics?

It depends on your point of view.

From a global perspective, the answer is undoubtedly Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, because track and field is one of the two most widely followed and played sports in the worlds (soccer is the other). And the world’s fastest man is the most prized Olympic distinction. And Bolt’s triple-triple, consecutive Olympic golds in the 100, 200 and sprint relay, may last as long as our galaxy.

From the host nation’s perspective, it would have to be Neymar, who scored the lone goal and the decisive penalty kick as Brazil won its first Olympic title in soccer. Neymar was Sidney Crosby 2010 redux: the athlete assuring soul-salving gold in his country’s national sport.

From a U.S. perspective, the choice isn’t as clear-cut, as Sports Illustrated showed with a cover featuring swimmers Katie Ledecky and Michael Phelps and gymnast Simone Biles, whom it called, “The Greatests.” Plural.

While that SI issue focused on just the first week of Olympic action, the three cover athletes essentially played a successful game of “Can you top this?” Ledecky won four gold medals and a silver and set two world records; Phelps won five golds and a silver, improving his record Olympic totals to 23 golds and 28 total; Biles won four golds, a bronze and the acclaim of venerable coach Martha Karolyi as the greatest gymnast of all time.

Whether you think someone topped those three as the No. 1 Team USA athlete will depend on whether you think an athlete who did brilliantly in his or her only Olympic event should get equal credit with athletes whose sports provide the opportunity to win multiple medals.

I tend to come down on the side of multiples, especially when the achievements were as remarkable as those of Ledecky, Phelps and Biles. If forced to pick one, I would go for…nope, not doing that. Sorry. Don’t want to be trolled to distraction.

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For U.S. Swimmers, Team Effort Brought Stunning Success In An Individual Sport

Maya DiRado after her upset win over Hungary's Katinka Hosszu in the 200 backstroke.  DiRado had a full set of medal colors in individual events and a second gold in 4 x 200 free relay.

Maybe it came from the team’s group music video, “Carpool Karaoke,” which has drawn 4.6 million YouTube views in the first 12 days since going online.

Maybe it came from the cowbell ringing in the warm-up pool to salute each U.S. swimmer as he or she went to the ready room before a race.

Maybe it came from assistant coach Greg Meehan’s history-lesson-cum-motivational-ploy of having each of the women swimmers plant an American flag on grass near their building in the Olympic village, claiming the land for their own the way the 1862 Homestead Act had encouraged settlers to move West.

Maybe it came from the “ice-breaker games” Meehan, the Stanford women’s head coach, had the team play at their pre-Olympic training camps in the U.S. Those games were designed to last five minutes but sometimes turned into 45 minutes of belly-laugh bonding.

Maybe it came from the positive vibes created as swimmer after swimmer had stunning performances in practice at those camps in San Antonio and Atlanta.

Or maybe it was all those reasons, both intangible and real, that explain how 47 athletes in an individual sport created a team that utterly – and a bit surprisingly – dominated the eight days of Olympic swimming that ended Saturday.

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How Michael Phelps Changed My Mind: Now (And Forever?) He Has Become The Greatest Olympian Of All Time

Embed from Getty Images

RIO DE JANEIRO – The crowd at the Olympic Aquatics Stadium was different Tuesday night.

It reacted unlike the swimming crowds had the first three nights of the Olympic meet, when the loudest noise had been reserved for Brazilian athletes, none of whom had yet contended for medals. I suddenly felt as if I were at a Passover seder, hearing the question, “Why is this night different from all other nights?”

The difference was a chance to see an athlete for the ages, to see him firsthand in his first individual final of these Olympics, a moment of universal significance, a moment the spectators relished.

When Michael Phelps was announced at the start of the 200-meter butterfly, the crowd roared and roared.

It was that way at the end, too, after Phelps had extracted payback for his loss in the event four years ago. He straddled a lane line, flexed his right arm, put the index finger of each hand in the air. The noise grew. Phelps gestured with his hands, asking the crowd for more, and they responded with fervor.

The victory and the acclaim, for his swimming achievements and his impact on the sport and the Olympics, all of it has combined to convince me of something I had argued against in the past.

Michael Phelps is no longer just the most decorated Olympian of all time and the best swimmer of all time.

He is the greatest Olympian of all time.

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Compared To Past, Rio May Seem Like Day At The Beach For Both Lochte, Franklin

RIO DE JANEIRO – This is a city whose global renown owes to a feeling that life is a beach – a virtual mandate to let the good times roll on Ipanema and Copacabana. So maybe it’s fitting that the 2016 Olympic Games will seem like lazy days on the strand for Missy Franklin and Ryan Lochte compared to their past experiences in the summer Games.

The irony is neither is likely to have days in the sun the way Franklin did in 2012, and Lochte did in both 2012 and 2008. 

This time around, they are Olympians, not stars, each swimming far fewer events than in the past, each likely to consider an individual event medal of any color as good as the golds they won four years ago in London.

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For Phelps & Lochte, another matchless episode of long-running hit

    Gonna take a sentimental journey
 
    Gonna set my heart at ease
 
    Gonna make a sentimental journey
 
    To renew old memories
 
           -- From the classic 1945 No. 1 hit song, “Sentimental Journey”

OMAHA, Neb. – They should have cleared everyone else out of the pool, leaving Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte in a match race, because that is what Friday night’s final of the 200-meter individual medley at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Swimming turned out to be.

Again.

No one expected anything else from the two men who have battled each other for global supremacy in the event over 13 years, creating the greatest rivalry in the history of their sport.

And the two 31-year-olds now have a chance to do it one more time at the 2016 Olympics next month in Rio.

“It isn’t over,” Lochte said. “We’ve still got another month to put everything together and really give the world a show.”

There never has been a longer-running hit in the sport.

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