The Rio Olympics have come to a close and with it, the daily updates on human greatness on land and in water.
From a fearless death vaulter to a woman who swims faster than the world record line, from a record number of marriage proposals to a grin on the way to a finish line – the Olympics this time have had their share of heart-stealing moments.
An exceptional games in an exceptional venue, the Rio 2016 remains unforgettable for ten of these most moving instances.
The Simones
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In competitive artistic gymnastics, Simone Biles’s form is as close to perfect as possible. She can entirely fall off a balance beam and still win bronze medal, her execution scores rarely slip below 9.5 out of ten, and her legs are clinically parallel to the floor whenever she is mid-layout. With five medals – four of which are gold – Biles leaves Rio the same way she came to the city – as a hero.
In swimming, it’s easy to win medals. There are more events than any other sport and the chances of a single athlete winning four medals are not slim. Unless, of course, you are swimming not just against seven others but against a painful history suffered by your ancestors. Simone Manuel has two golds and two silvers and her win in the women’s 100 meter freestyle made her the first African-American woman to win an individual swimming medal at the Olympics.
Manuel’s victory comes less than a century after white Americans were throwing acid in pools where black Americans were swimming. But for both Simones the Rio Olympics was a stage to unfurl the possibilities of holding up their status as undeniable role models, not just to black women but to the whole of womankind. The success of the Simones has not just resulted in a spike in babies named after them, but in the world taking note of two of the best athletes emerging out of a subjugated demograph..
The firsts
Nine countries won their very first Olympic gold this time at Rio, proving once and for all that in spite of US dominance, sportspersons who play with a whole nation’s dreams on their shoulders do often succeed.
To be the first to succeed in a sport in any country is an uphill and isolating journey, so when Monica Puig orchestrated an unbelievable tennis upset to win gold for a financially ravaged Puerto Rico, the country celebrated the success of their ‘chica de oro’ for days.
When the Fiji men won the Rugby Sevens gold by defeating Great Britain, a national holiday was declared. When Kosovo’s star judoka Majlinda Kelmendi won gold in the 52 kg, it was the first medal ever for the independent nation. Joseph Schooling of Singapore not only won the first gold of the country, but he swam to victory in the 100 meter freestyle by beating one Michael Phelps.
Vietnam’s Hoang Xuan Vinh, Tajikistan’s Dilshod Nazarov, Côte d'Ivoire’s Cheick Sallah Cisse, Jordan’s Ahmad Abughaush and Bahrain’s Ruth Jebet too won golds for the first time.
Adelinde Cornelissen and Parzival
Ridiculed because of its apparently arbitrary inclusion into the world of elite sports, equestrian dressage has long suffered on the sidelines of Olympic glory. Which is strange, mainly because while athletes in other sports can concentrate on their own personal fitness through the course of their careers, dressage riders have to look after not just themselves but also the most essential of companions in their game – their horses.
And look after her horse is what Dutch rider Adelinde Cornelissen did, when she bowed out of the finals for the well-being of her horse Parzival.
The 37-year-old rider had hoped to end the career of her 19-year-old horse with a medal finish like they did in the 2012 London Olympics, when a possible bug-bite led to the horse developing a fever and a swollen mouth.
Cornelissen quit because the competition would prove stressful for an already ill Parzival and her action drew applause at an age of cutthroat and often ruthless competitiveness in sports.
The return of the GOATs
Rio saw many new athletes emerge but it also saw the return of three athletes who, quite simply, need not even have returned to remain unforgettable. But return they did and with their podium finishes in swimming, sprint and marathon, Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt and Mo Farah have firmly removed concerns that the thirties are for retirement when it comes to individual sports.
Between them, the GOATs have ten golds, but the count of injuries that have been overcome, journeys to the rehab that have been completed, personal struggles that have been gone through in order to stand where they have stood is what makes their quest to retain gold legendary.
Rio was the last Olympic games for Phelps and Bolt and most probably for Farah as well. New legends will come and newer records will be made, but the 31st games will forever bear witness to a resounding return of three undisputable greats.
The women from India
A category unto themselves, little remains to be said about the Indian women in the Olympics that has not already been said before.
Although the photograph shows Dipa Karmakar, PV Sindhu and Sakshi Malik, the list of Indian women who have captured the imagination of an often misogynist nation stretches to names like steeplechase qualifier Lalita Babar, archers Bombayla Devi Lashiram and Deepika Kumari, golfer Aditi Ashok and wrestler Vinesh Phogat who injured her knee in a heroic show.
Much remains to be done for Indian women in sports, but the few who competed at Rio walked through unchartered territory, making it possible for generations of women afterwards to dream an Olympic dream.
Anthony Ervin
Few stories will not pale in comparison to Anthony Ervin’s who at 35 years became the oldest Olympic swimmer to win gold (in the men’s 50 meter freestyle). One can mention that in 2000, a then 19-year-old Ervin had won the same gold in the NCAA championships and become the youngest to set a world record in the category but it would only be a little detail in the story of his unique and humbling life’s story.
Ervin’s background makes him part-black, part-native American and part-Jewish. He is not just an amalgamation of some of the longest suffering ethnic communities but at a young age he developed Tourettes – a syndrome manifesting in tics that inhibit control over one’s movements.
Ervin retired at 22, lost himself in drugs, attempted suicide, sold his solitary Olympic medal to raise money for the survivors of the tsunami, got over the impediment of his slow start in the 50 m sprint and essayed a comeback befitting his two medals at Rio.
He says that he will participate in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. He will be 39 then.
An Armstrong that cycling can remember
2008, 2012 and 2016 – Kristin Armstrong has been the best in the world through these Olympics, through motherhood, and through her late thirties and early forties. At 43, Armstrong is quite simply the most successful woman on a cycle. She has also given the world an Armstrong that the sport of cycling can be proud of.
Battling chilly rain, fog and the stigma of a last name like hers in the sport of clean biking, Armstrong dominated the women’s cycling time trials and covered a distance of 18.5 miles in 44 minutes and 26.32 seconds.
At the end of the trail, she dismounted her cycle, and asked the camera person, “Did I win?” and then lay down on the ground curling into a ball when she found out that she indeed had won. Her six-year-old son was by then worried for his mother who was crying in spite of having won.
The two-time gold defender who came out of retirement twice not only had the uphill task of silencing critics who challenged her selection to the US team, with her trademark laconic wit, she ended her post-medal interview saying, “Now I have to teach [my son] sometimes we cry when we win.”
Friendship on the tracks and on the mat
This was a particularly beautiful Olympics when it came to friendship. On day 12 of the Rio Olympics when the USA’s Abby D’Agostino stopped for New Zealand runner Nikki Hamblin on the tracks of the women’s 5,000 meter, they both knew that they would not win any medals. But history was made of another kind, a history of fair play and understanding that highlighted the spirit of the Olympics. The athletes may have collided and fallen in the heats but their show of comradeship in helping each other to the finish line won them a rare Olympic award and the hearts of a global audience.
In the artistic gymnastics qualifying rounds, Hong Un-Jong of North Korea stopped for a selfie with Lee Eun-ju of South Korea.
In doing so, a fraught history of two enemy nations dissolved for a few seconds, and even though social media was rife with concern over whether Hong would be censured for her show of camaraderie with a South Korean rival, it showed the world the power of a single moment in rendering international politics null and void.
The team with no national flag
Two judokas, two swimmers, a long-distance runner and five mid-distance runners competed as a nation unto themselves at this year’s Olympics, bringing to sharp contrast their individual spirits and the world order that brought them here.
The Refugee team of ten are not just athletes who were distinguished enough to participate under the Olympic flag, but they are also athletes who did not give up. With every photograph they took, every smile they smiled for every camera and every jig they broke into for every celebration, the paid tribute to the courage of the homeless in this world. This is the first time a refugee team has participated in an Olympics. While this in itself reaffirms the power of individual resilience, let it hopefully be the last.
Caster Semenya
In Rio, Caster Semenya sped to the finish line at the women’s 800 meter in 1:55.28 minutes, winning gold for South Africa and causing sections of the media to froth in the mouth once again about the fact that she is an exceptionally fast woman. The IAAF (the track and field federation in charge of regulating the sport) has subjected Semenya to every form of public scrutiny possible for her high levels of testosterone that causes her to be hyperandrogenic.
In their demand for her levels to be synthetically lowered, in their public announcements of their belief that she should not compete in the women’s category and in their morbid sympathy for Semenya’s losing competitors the bastions of liberal media have made the 25-year-old’s athletic existence a story to be moulded and rescripted as they please.
The same voices that decry Russia’s state-sponsored doping also demand for Semenya’s testosterone levels to be artificially brought down – something that apparently doesn’t come in the way of their demand for clean athletes in sport. Amidst the well-founded disgust in the fact that similarly fast athletes like Katie Ledecky hardly ever invoke scrutiny as relentless as Semenya’s brilliance has, Caster herself has spoken little on herself with the world’s jury of scientists still out on whether elevated testosterone levels offer an athlete an unfair advantage.
India too is not far behind when it comes to recognising that female athletes are (surprise, surprise) different from one another. The names of Dutee Chand, Pinki Pramanik and Santhi Soundarajan ring the problem of accusing a non-conforming female athlete closer home.
The Rio games has cemented her position as one of the fastest, but it has also brought to light, in Semenya’s words, the fact that sport is “supposed” to unify a world and be about performance alone.
