Seventeen days and anywhere from $7.4 to $11.1 billion later–who really knows how much it costs to host these mega-events anyway?–the 2016 Summer Olympics are over. Yet amidst all the controversy leading up to these Games, the Rio Olympics went off without too many hitches. Of course, most of the trouble host countries face doesn’t occur until years after the event; but, overall, I’d say these past two weeks were as entertaining as any of the more recent Olympic games–Summer or Winter–I remember.
So now we will have to wait four long years until the 2020 Games in Tokyo before we tune in to any more 200 meter backstroke heats or Decathalon races. However, there still are a few intriguing storylines I’d like to discuss before we brush aside the 2016 Summer Olympics for good. Let’s start with a debate regarding the two most iconic athletes of not just these Games, but the last decade of Olympic competition.
Bolt or Phelps: Who’s Better?
Much has already been said about these two legendary athletes, so I’ll cut to the chase: Michael Phelps is the greater Olympian, but Usain Bolt is the better athlete. Don’t quite understand? Let me explain.
Phelps has won 28 medals–23 of them gold–across five Olympics. That’s the most all-time by far. The person closest to Phelps in terms of overall medals (Russian gymnast Larisa Latynina) is ten behind. The next closest swimmers to Phelps, male or female, are still sixteen behind. Again, we’re still talking overall medals here. Remarkably, the gap between Phelps and every other Olympian ever in terms of gold medals is even wider: His 23 gold’s are fourteen more than the five athletes in second place with 9 (Latynina, Bolt, Carl Lewis, Mark Spitz, and some guy named Paavo Nurmi).
There is validity to the idea that swimmers have an advantage in obtaining medals because they normally compete in far more events. After all, Phelps competed in eight different races during the 2008 Beijing Olympics while the most events Bolt has ever competed in is three. However, Phelps’s enormous medal gap over every other swimmer in Olympic history proves that even when we account for how swimmers competes in more events, he is still unmatched at the Olympic level. Compare that to Bolt, who, as great as he is, has company atop the all-time medal count in Track & Field.
Yet even though Michael Phelps will close his career as the greatest Olympian of all-time, he is not the better athlete than the fastest man alive. I don’t intend to discredit swimming because it is a difficult and worthy sport, but consider this. According to Time magazine, a recent survey indicated that nearly half of all Americans can’t swim. To be clear, though, the article’s headline is misleading because it’s not that most people can’t swim, it’s that they haven’t learned how to. Moreover, I came across another article about USA Swimming publicizing how they surpassed 400,000 members in 2013. In short, a majority of Americans don’t swim competitively. This can likely be said about the rest of the world as well, seeing as you won’t find swimming atop many country’s lists of most popular sports.
Track & Field is a completely different story. At some point or another, everyone runs. Everyone! It may only be in your P.E. class, but the point still holds. Sure, not as many people may compete in the 100 meter dash as they do in a sport like soccer or basketball. However, those sports still require running. If you’re fast–like, really fast–then you’ll compete in a competitive race at least once in your lifetime just like many of the NFL’s fastest players have before.
And of all the people on Earth, Usain Bolt is still significantly faster than them all. No one had ever won two consecutive 100 meter titles at the Olympics. Bolt has now won three in a row. Plus, in addition to going a perfect nine-for-nine in the 100, 200, and 4 x 100 meter relays in the last three Olympics, his world records in each of those events will likely stand for quite some time.
With all due respect to Phelps, obtaining world records in the esoteric butterfly stroke does not compare to owning the title of fastest person ever. So while he may not be the greatest Olympian of all-time based on sheer medal dominance, Usain Bolt is certainly the better athlete than Phelps and is in the conversation with the Pele’s and Ali’s of the world in terms of all-time greatness.
Most Outstanding Athlete: Katie Ledecky
Ledecky was the one who impressed me the most after week one and that belief still holds true after week two; because of all the tremendous athletes we were privileged to watch in these Games, Ledecky’s dominance in both short and long-distance races was something I had not seen before and will surely never forget. Sure, Simone Biles was sensational, but she came up short in one of her individual events while Ledecky won easily in all of hers. The aforementioned Phelps and Bolt were obviously great, too. But haven’t we seen them at their very best before already? That’s why I’m giving the nineteen-year-old Ledecky the “ultimate gold medal” for being the most outstanding athlete in Rio.
Silver: Usain Bolt
Bronze: Simone Biles
Will LochteGate Be the Ultimate Memory of These Olympics?
Of course, the most notable–and most bizarre–story to stem from these games was Ryan Lochte’s….how do we put this?….fabrication of a night gone horribly wrong in those awful slums of Rio de Janeiro. A lot of people totally bought it, too. I did. Al Roker and the NBC news crew did—“That could’ve ended a lot worse,” said Roker after hearing Lochte’s story. Fortunately, the only people that didn’t buy it was law enforcement in Brazil.
Let’s be clear about one thing, though. Yes, what Lochte and his three teammates did was wrong. They absolutely deserve some sort of punishment for embarrassing both Brazil and the United States. But, in the overall scheme of things, concocting a story like this isn’t as bad as, say, actually robbing people at gunpoint. So, all those who say that Lochte and the three other swimmers should be banned from swimming in the next Olympics or even for life should check their statements. Give him and the others a one or two year ban and call it a day.
But here’s the ultimate question: Will this fiasco be the lasting memory of the 2016 Rio Olympics? In contrast to the 2008 Beijing or 2010 Vancouver Olympics, I doubt this year’s opening ceremonies will go down as the most memorable aspect of the event. There weren’t any transcendent moments like the Black Power salute at the ’68 Summer Games or the Miracle on Ice in 1980, either. That means the only hope for the legacy of this year’s Olympics is that the performances by the likes of Ledecky, Bolt, and the others I mentioned above are celebrated for years to come; the monumental achievements by everyone from the US Women’s Gymnastics team to Puerto Rico’s Monica Puig are not forgotten; and the epic moments such as Neymar’s penalty kick to give Brazil its first gold medal in soccer and Bahamian sprinter Shaunae Miller’s dive to win the 400 meter final outshine all the turmoil that constantly permeated these Rio Olympics.
Bolt photo courtesy of Sporting News; Ledecky photo courtesy CBC; Lochte photo courtesy of Martin Bureau/Getty Images
