Bach declared the Rio Games closed and expressed hope that they had left a lasting mark on the metropolitan area of 12 million people.
Advertisement
The host Brazilians got soccer gold that they craved, the Russians struggled on the heels of the exposure of a state-sponsored doping program, and the Chinese finished well below expectations.
After 21 days of competing, the U.S. topped the medal list with 121 medals: 46 gold, 37 silver and 38 bronze, followed by Great Britain with 67 medals: 27 gold, 23 silver and 17 bronze and then China with 70 medals: 26 gold, 18 silver and 26 bronze.
They led a US bounty of 121 medals, 51 more than China in the country-by-country count.
The most popular athletes included USA swimmers Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky, gymnast Simone Biles, footballer Neymar and sprinter Usain Bolt.
Multi-medalists Biles, Felix and Ledecky were among a strong contingent of American women, who for the second straight Olympics, set a record with 61 medals, exceeding its previous high of 58 from London in 2012.
The ebullience was further buoyed on Saturday by the Brazilian football team’s win over Germany, a victory that yielded one of the country’s seven gold medals in the Games and helped ease the sting of its humiliating 2014 World Cup loss to the Germans.
“Title IX paved the way and created so many opportunities for women in sport”, said Felix. And the margin between first and second in the overall medals race this year tops all others (the boycotted games of 1980 and 1984 excluded) since the Americans won 67 more medals than Italy did at the 1932 Los Angeles Games.
“Nothing too bad happened and I’d say it was better than expected”, said Nivea Araujo, a Rio resident attending the closing ceremony.
Four years ago, London sent the world on its way with a parade of supermodels and pop stars such as Annie Lennox, the Spice Girls and the Who. She also became the first wrestler in Olympic history to win four gold medals, and afterwards dedicated it on the memory of her late mother. “Winning medals and just one after the other”. Overall, the US collected 28 medals in team events, including three golds (basketball and water polo) and two bronzes (indoor volleyball) in traditional team sports.
China won 26 golds, just over half as many as it won in Beijing in 2008. “There have been so many first-time performances by so many athletes in different sports and our hats go off to the Rio 2016 Organizing Committee for creating an environment in which our athletes could thrive and reach their potential”. Efimova has twice been banned.
“We are in a hard moment as a country right now, we can’t hide that, but the Games were scheduled and I’m glad we could enjoy them”, said Alessandro Freitas, also from Rio.
But one man bestrode the whole event, Usain Bolt signing off his extraordinary Olympic career with an unprecedented treble-treble: gold in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay for the third time in successive Games.
While there’s no question that we’re racking up more medals than nearly ever before, it is important to note that the size of the Team USA squad (as with most other nations’) has been growing in size.
Advertisement
And 10 teams – including the independent team – won their first golds, including Monica Puig in women’s tennis for Puerto Rico.
