The Good, Bad & Ugly of the Paris Olympics
It’s all over for the 2024 Summer Olympics. There were plenty of stories so let's recap what we saw in France.
The good starts with Paris, itself. The views of the city were spectacular. Every time I saw the Eiffel Tower I got chills. Its tourism commission must be bubbling with happiness because I’m positive many people want to come to Paris after what they saw—including me.
The opening ceremony was the best thing about the two weeks. It was incredible seeing the countries come in on boats. And how great was Celine Dione! It was so special that I rewatched her song three times.
Sometimes the good and the bad happen in the same event. Noah Lyles won the Men’s 100-meter dash. It took a photo finish to decide the winner, NBC play-by-play announcer Leigh Diffey called the wrong winner. That occasionally happens, but we’re still waiting for Diffey to admit his error.
Lyles was also involved in a bad moment. He was also entered in the finals of the 200 Meters. He was trying to win the rare double in the sprints. Lyles finished in third place winning the bronze medal. He then collapsed on the track. It turned out he was diagnosed and raced with Covid. His selfish decision to run put the other competitors and officials he was near at risk.
French swimmer Leon Marchand won five medals, four of them Gold. In an individual medley race, each time Marchand surfaced for air during the breaststroke, you could hear the French crowd loudly cheering him on toward victory. Another moment that brought chills.
Back to the bad, the U.S. 4x100 track relay failed to medal again. Each Olympics they have the fastest runners and each Olympics brings a miserable disaster. This time it happened with such a bad first baton pass that the team was disqualified. Oh well—maybe in Los Angeles?
Now on to the ugly—and man was it gross:
There always seems to be some issue with the judge’s scoring in gymnastics—it was no different in Paris. In the women’s floor exercises, the original score has a Romanian gymnast winning a bronze medal. The United States filed a protest asking for Jordan Chiles's routine to be reviewed. The second look raised her score enough to move her into third place and give her the bronze medal. This pissed off the Romanians. Five days later, it was reversed again and Chiles was asked to return her medal. The reason was the original protest was filed too late—by four minutes. In the meantime, Chiles was being attacked on social media, including many racial slurs. The U.S. says they’ll be filing another protest so this is a long way from being over.
Another messy story concerns Algerian Welterweight Boxer Imane Khelif. Although she had an XY chromosome, she was allowed to participate in the boxing competition. The outrage over her peaked after she beat up an Italian fighter. It led to a rumor she was transgendered that caught on all over social media. Even worse, The Boston Globe had a headline reading “Transgender Boxer Advances.” They apologized but the damage was done. Khelif went on to win a Gold Medal. This entire episode should have been handled earlier and better. I wonder if the emotional pain done to her was worth the medal.
There were many other uplifting stories including the Chinese diving team sweeping all eight events, the return of Simone Biles leading the U.S. to a win in the gymnastics team event, Katy Ledecky winning multiple gold medals for the third straight Olympics, Kenyan Faith Kipyegon winning the 1500-meter run for also the third consecutive games, after coming back from a devastating injury Mallory Swanson scores the gold medal-winning goal for the U.S. Soccer team, and finally the U.S. Figure Skating team receives their gold medal two years after it was held up due to a Russian doping scandal.
So, that’s all from Paris. We can now go back to watching bad Chicago baseball, pre-season football and worrying about who will be the next POTUS.
The 2026 Winter Games are only eighteen months away. I wonder if our Curling team is ready to go to Milan.
