I heard somewhere there were just over 300 events at the Rio Olympics and I can’t say I seen them all but I can’t think of one sport I didn’t watch from Archery to Wrestling and all the sports in-between. Medals or not I enjoyed my two weeks in front of the TV. The velodrome was my favourite venue, followed by the rowing at the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon just two of many.
Team GB secured second place in the Olympic medal table beating China and a host of countries that in the past, we would be looking up to and now they could look up at us. The UK are now a superpower in the Olympics and along the way surpassed the 65-medal count achieved at London 2012. There could have been even more than the 67-medals as a number of athletes across the sports came home in the dreaded fourth spot.
The British Olympic Association set a reasonable medal target for Team GB of 48-medals in Rio, one more than they achieved at the 2008 Beijing Games. The target reached and overtaken with five days of the games left. There was some heartache to on show. Who could forget taekwondo star Lutalo Muhammad heartbroken has he missed a gold medal by one second he looked a broken man.
The Rio Olympics was not a disaster but there was a lack of spectators at many venues. It may have been me but the seats seem to be full of tourists at the smaller venues anyway unless a local athlete was involved the locals were then vigorous in their support. Unless a media blackout was in operation, there were only a few visitors’ mugged and mass attacks on tourists failed to emerge.
I can’t see any South America country rushing to hold the Olympics anytime soon when Brazil won the games in 2009 the Olympics were expected to showcase Brazil’s emergence as a major economic force. Much has changed since then.
Roll on 2020 Tokyo Olympics
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