Bobbing for Medals: The Last Day 2024

We spend most of the day watching the Olympics, so you don’t have to.

And it’s come down to this.  The last day of competition.  And there were still a few major events left to finish.

First though, to follow-up on something from a few days ago.  That’s when I wrote about how there was a challenge from the Romania women’s gymnastic team about Team USA’s Jordan Chiles being raised up to a Bronze medal after a U.S. challenge over a judging mistake.  A panel has ruled for Romania, saying that the challenge by the United States occurred four seconds too late, after the one-minute period allowed to make a challenge.  The U.S. response has been how unfair this is that a gymnast should be penalized because of what was the judges’ error.  Though the Romanian gymnast will now get a Bronze medal (despite the IOC acknowledging previously that there was a mistake and Jordan Chiles, in fact, did score higher), there is no word yet on whether Chiles will be able to also keep her Bronze medal.  I wouldn’t hold my breath, but we’ll see…

Which returns us to the final events.

The women’s basketball Gold medal final was far more intense than I’m sure most watching expected.  But U.S. women’s basketball has won 60 games in a row.  And this team had won all its games by double digits.  In fairness, the French team they played in the finals is very good and physical, and playing before a raucous home crowd.  The result is that this game was a nail-biter, literally down to the last shot.  The U.S. team was sloppy on offense, missing layups and missing more free throws than in previous games, with many turnovers.  On defense, they let France get repeat offensive rebounds throughout.  At halftime, the score was 25-25.  The U.S. didn’t score for four minutes into the second half.  At one point, France took a 10 point lead.  The U.S. team came back, thanks in large part to Kaleah Cooper off the bench.  The gam was tied with 3:45 left.  Their lead was only one point with just over one minute left.  With four seconds remaining, France needed a 3-point shot to tie the game – and they made the great shot…but the players foot was about two inches over the line, so it only counted for two points, as the buzzer sounded.  And so the U.S. won the Gold medal 67-66.

I meant to write this yesterday, but it slipped through the cracks.  But excellent interviewing by NBC’s Lewis Johnson, talking with the U.S. 4x100m team that had had the disastrous baton pass.  Lewis has been doing this job at the Olympics for years – it’s a fairly thankless task, getting comments from exhausted athletes right after their event, usually track and field.  He’s very genial, though the interviews are usually pretty surface, in part because he’s not trying to dig deep at that emotional moment, in part because the athletes have no interest in going deep.  But in this case, because of the total collapse of the run, he wouldn’t take, “It just didn’t happen,” as an answer.  “Why didn’t it happen?” he asked pointedly.  And again got, “It just didn’t happen.”  All four teammates were there, including the runner who had trouble receiving the baton, but it was the runner supposed to pass the baton that Johnson focused on.  They all probably figured Johnson would accept the non-answer and move on, but it was too much an evasion of a big problem.  So, Johnson tried another tack, becoming more specific.  “Did he leave early, or were you not able to catch up to him?” he asked.  The runner tried it again, muttering a standard kind of “We didn’t get it done.”  But still Johnson didn’t give up.  “What went wrong?”  Finally, the runner realized he had to say something.  Because (whether he knew it or not) Johnson is a former athlete, even competing in track at two Olympic trials (as well as playing college football at the beloved Northwestern!), and this was too incompetent a race on the biggest audience stage to accept Generic Athlete Avoidance.  So, the runner at last gave a sort of weak reply, something along the lines of how they practiced and all support each other, but at least Lewis Johnson – not giving up – got a reply.  And made it clear that “It just didn’t happen” was not only obvious, but not an acceptable answer.

Paris organizers had a fun event after the men’s Marathon – they created a “Marathon por Tout”, a marathon for all.  The marathon route was left intact (since it would be run the next day for women) with the streets blocked off – and it was opened in Paris at night for anyone in the public who wanted to run.  An estimated 20,000 people showed up.

As for the women’s Marathon, temperatures were five degrees hotter than for men, which sounds small but is a big deal when you’re running 26 miles.  So, there was a lot of hydrating.  It was the same beautiful route through Paris out to the Versailles Palace on the outskirts of the city, where runners turned around and at about the 17 mile mark hit the crushing uphill climb.  This was a 10-degree grade that went on for about 600 yards.  Five runners were in the breakaway pack, later dropped to four runners with a couple miles to go, which always strikes me as so difficult – imagine running for 26 miles, only to lose out on the top three medals by just four seconds (as was the case here).  Then it was just two fighting for the Gold – and watching Marathon runner sprint for the finish, the final 200 yards is always remarkable.  The winner, Sifan Hassan, an Ethiopian-born runner representing the Netherlands, had a great Olympics – she also won Bronze medals in both the 5000k and 10,000k races.  She won the Marathon with an Olympic record time of 2:22:55.

This was the 40th anniversary of the first-ever women’s Marathon, held in Los Angeles.  And I attended the start of that race, which was held early on a Sunday morning at the track of Santa Monica City College, complete with a special ceremony to honor the occasion.  After which the runners left the stadium and took off on their 26-mile journey around the city.  That's American Joan Benoit -- the ultimate Gold Medal-winner -- in the front and center, in gray, with her white hat on backwards, right above the man's head intruding into my shot.

I then took off myself for my car and quickly drove towards the Pacific Ocean, parked and found a spot where I could see the women running past, along Ocean Ave.  And again, that's Joan Benoit.  She's much easier to spot here, because she surprised everyone by running so fast so early that she broke far away from the pack, everyone sure she'd burn herself out -- except that she didn't and maintained that massive lead and won the race with no one even near her.  There she is again, right behind the lead vehicle in her white cap -- look down the road behind her, there's no one in sight.  And wouldn't be for a while.

Which takes us to the Closing Ceremonies.

Beginning it out in the courtyard with an à​ capella choral version of "Under Paris Skies" is not what I would have expected. I think the standard expression is "What a bold choice."

Once they entered the stadium, I was a bit confused for a while, but phew, I finally figured it out. It's a promotional ad for the upcoming movie, "Alien: Romulus."

But what a joyful way to end the Games. A dystopian look at George Orwell's "1984" as performed by H.G. Wells' Morlocks.

If George W. Bush was in the crowd at the Stade de France, he'd turn to Michelle Obama and say, "This is some weird sh*t."

Let the Games continue in 2026.  Then back here in Los Angeles in 2028.  I'm starting to get my rest for that...