Ughh, I miss it already! Monday was the first morning in more than two weeks that I woke up without a multiscreen’s worth of Olympic competition already deep in progress, and now I’m not sure what to talk about with my children and/or neighbors. Summer … math … worksheets? The weather?! Time was, you could flash a stranger a smile and say something like “Catch that pommel horse guy?” or “They’re calling it the best 1,500 of all time” and feel like a citizen of the world. But then Leon Marchand pulled the plug on the eternal flame on Sunday and it made me legit emotional. The 2024 Paris Games are over, the Gold Zone has come and gone like a traveling carnival, and my global command center—which also did duty as my kids’ balance beam/pommel horse/vault—is back to being just a boring old couch.
Still, we’ll always remember the people who produced unforgettable moments over the past few weeks—from Simone Biles to Sha’Carri Richardson, from rugby to basketball, from surfer ass to surfer air, from Celine Dion to Tom Cruise. So to celebrate an all-time Olympic Games, here’s an instanostalgic and unabashedly American look back at some of the winners and losers from the XXXIII Olympiad—the various competitors for whom we’re happy and/or sorry that happened. Go for the gold, light the flame, ring the bell, and thanks for the memories.
Winner: American Men’s Runners (When Trailing)
Probably my favorite serotonin-boosting activity of the past couple of weeks has been searching the names of various U.S. runners on social media and then reading hundreds and hundreds of YouTube comments and tweet replies and Reddit posts from track nerds geeking out over whatever the hell it was we just saw. It’s a salve! Again and again in Paris, the Team USA runners (including, and especially, some guys who flew under the radar going into the games) began their races, lagged behind the leaders for the majority of the time, and then exhibited feats of athletic ability that had me jumping up and down and screaming and crying and—as I imagined how it must feel to haul ass at the tail end of a 10,000-meter race—very nearly throwing up.
Hauling ass at the tail end of a 10,000-meter race is what Grant Fisher did, and he did something similar at the end of the 5,000-meter, finishing both races with bronze medals that felt worth their weight in gold. On the absolute opposite end of the spectrum, Noah Lyles somehow managed his own come-from-behind stunner in a race that lasted less than nine-point-eight seconds. (Lyles spent nearly half the 100-meter dash in last place before surging his way to gold.) Quincy Hall’s astounding win in the 400 (an event so grueling it once destroyed half my high school field hockey team) was the most relatable to watch, inasmuch as I can ever relate with a world-class athlete: The look on that man’s face is what I see in the mirror on 100 percent of my trips to the gym.
But when it came to unexpected and delightful outcomes that favored the Stars and Stripes, nothing beat that 1,500. The pre-race coverage for that event (mine included, and, notably, NBC’s in particular) all focused on one of the track world’s messiest ongoing beefs, that between Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Great Britain’s Josh Kerr. Except then it was a pair of Americans—Cole Hocker and Yared Nuguse—who turned on the gas to finish the race in first and third. They’re calling it the best 1,500 of all time, I couldn’t stop saying for days afterward. This was a race that launched a thousand quips, and I think I’ve probably read them all.
Loser: American Men’s Runners (When Doing a Group Project)
It’s one thing to lose a race because you’ve simply been beaten by a superior competitor: Just ask the USA mixed relay team, which was fully shocked but awed by Dutch runner Femke Bol’s blistering come-from-behind anchor run to steal gold for the Netherlands. But it’s another thing when you keep defeating yourself.
“Evil is a relay sport when the one who’s burned turns to pass the torch,” Fiona Apple sang a few years back, but for Team USA, it’s different: It’s the pass itself that burns them, and it’s been happening for more than a few years. When the men’s 4x100 relay team fumbled the baton last week and was disqualified in the event final, it was an annoyingly familiar sight: Sports Illustrated had already harped on the group’s “reign of relay terror” from Rio, eight years ago. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast, as the Navy Seals like to say, but our fastest Americans remain unable to freakin’ slow their roll so they can win their race. The last time they medaled in the event was 20 years ago—and that one wasn’t even a gold. But don’t take my frustrated word for it: Just ask Carl Lewis!
Winner: The Young Swimmers
It can be difficult when your reputation precedes you, especially when you’re still in your teens and early 20s. And as swimmers Leon Marchand and Summer McIntosh prepared for Paris, they had a lot of hype to live up to—despite having lived just about decades. Marchand, the 22-year-old French phenom who is coached by Michael Phelps’s former mentor, demonstrated exactly why he’s already earned the stamp of approval from Phelps himself. Marchand finished the Games with five medals, four of them gold, and he turned in one swim in particular that harkened back to one of Phelps’s most signature wins. Then there’s 17-year-old Summer McIntosh, whose results were so good—three golds, two of them in individual medley races, and a silver—that the celebrated Canadian star might have somehow been underappreciated this time around. Something tells me that won’t be the case four years from now.
Loser: Katie Ledecky (In a Good Way!)
Katie Ledecky has been winning races by absurd amounts for long enough now that, dare I say it, I actually kind of liked watching her lose to Ariarne Titmus and McIntosh in the 400-meter free. (And by “lose” I mean “win the bronze, one of her 14 career Olympic medals—ho hum!”) Yeah yeah, I know it’s not her prime event; that would be the 1,500, which she still dominates to such an extent that it’s hard for me to imagine she won’t give it one last go at L.A. 2028. But I just sorta appreciated the reminder that she’s not a total cyborg, you know?
Winner: Celine Dion
I can’t believe we used to make fun of this incredible woman. Mon dieu! Sacre bleu!!!
Loser: That Nice Medic Who Mistakenly Assumed Someone Had Been Thoughtful Enough to Bring Him a Chair
It’s not just the athletes who can have an unpredictable Olympics: When you sign up to work at the Games, you never know what kind of fame or infamy might result. Sometimes you’re the beloved Bob the Cap Catcher … and sometimes you’re this poor medic who didn’t realize that the chair is for the injured athlete you’re there to help, dummy, not for you! (This is absolutely something I would do.)
Winner: Three Generations Under One Roof
I feel silly talking about my own parents and kids when there are so many family-first Olympic stories of note—from Lola Anderson’s late father preserving her childhood dreams to this beautiful tale of a brother, a sister, and the marathon of life—but I just want to take a moment to thank the Olympics for preserving harmony in my home during a recent visit from my parents. East Coaster septuagenarians waking up at the crack of 5 a.m. Pacific time and getting befuddled by the TV remote? The Gold Zone on Peacock solves this! Three generations squished under one small roof? Things feel a lot less cramped when everyone is busy opening their hearts and minds to some kayaking sisters or rowerbros.
I’ll never forget sitting with my dad and watching Marchand be introduced to the world, just as I’ll also always remember discussing bouldering strat and badminton birdies with my sons. Some of my own earliest Olympic memories were from the 1992 Games—the image of Mary Ellen Clark up on the high-diving platform with the city of Barcelona unfolding beyond her is forever burned into my brain—and it was a genuinely cool parenting moment to know that my sons are old enough to one day look back on seeing people like Simone Biles and Mondo DuPlantis in Paris. Now, about those summer math worksheets, which have to be around here somewhere …
Loser: The American Health Care System, As Ever
Always a ringing endorsement of our medical-industrial complex when the country’s top talents are all stoked over access to a free physical. New political policy plank: Olympic Polyclinics 4 All!
Winner: That One Hairstyle
TIRED: The humble ponytail.
REQUIRED: The return in two years of that cherished Winter Olympics standby, the “slut strand.”
YOU’RE HIRED: “It’s not difficult, because all athletes have the same style: Just make a fade on the side.” —the free Olympic barber (This should be part of the American health care system too, imo.)
Loser: The Canadian Women’s Soccer Team’s Attempts at Covert Espionage
“I set up the secret spyware, boss!”
“Thanks. You bugged those phones?”
“Yes boss, I made good and sure I buzzed those drones! Real big and loud-like, just up there hoverin’ away in restricted airspace directly over the New Zealand practice field, just like you asked.”
Winner: Simone Biles—But Crucially, Not ONLY Simone Biles
Similarly to Ledecky, one of the most unexpectedly fun aspects of Simone Biles’s comeback in Paris was the way she didn’t win ’em all—and even reveled in her losses. Back in 2021, a twisty mind-body disconnect derailed Biles’s Tokyo Olympics and led her to take a multiyear break from gymnastics competition. But ultimately she returned, and her appearance at a third Games this summer, at 27, made her the oldest American woman on the gymnastics team in 72 years.
It wasn’t an all-around easy or simple Games for Biles. On the first day of Olympic competition, she hurt her leg and frayed our nerves; we held our breaths when she took flight. But when it mattered most, she nailed her routines, leading Team USA to first place in the team event and herself to individual all-around gold.
Then, though, Biles did something that was arguably equally as cool to watch: She relaxed. (And by “relaxed” I mean “won a third gold, and also a silver.”) She fell off the balance beam and bounced out of bounds on the floor during event finals. She also nailed maneuvers that other elite gymnasts dare not even try. She looked thrilled as Jade Carey picked up a bronze on the vault and Suni Lee made the podium in both the all-around and the uneven bars. She beamed on the sideline and we-are-not-worthy’d on the podium as her biggest and smiliest competition, Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade, earned gold on the floor exercise. Before our eyes, Biles abandoned the premise that everything in Olympic competition has to be some zero-sum contest balanced on an apparatus’s edge of renown and ruin. Instead, she demonstrated how gymnastics can be a sport of plenty, with more than enough tricks and treats to go around. Well, sometimes …
Loser: The Nincompoops Who Judged the Women’s Floor Exercise
To refer to the results of the women’s floor exercise final as a comedy of errors would be to imply that what happened was funny. It’s better described like a clown car: driven by sad people, with way too many characters squeezed into the back for a nauseating, pointless ride.
Not one, not two, but three gymnasts were affected by various aspects of the floor exercise scoring, with each of them having an arguable claim to the event’s bronze medal:
- Ana Barbosu of Romania, who initially finished third at the conclusion of the event and was dancing around with a Romanian flag and celebrating her medal when word came in that the judges had recalculated another gymnast’s score and knocked Barbosu abruptly out of third place;
- America’s sassiest sweetheart, Jordan Chiles, the gymnast who had the recalculated score. Chiles originally finished the event in fifth place, but her score was reassessed after her coach filed an inquiry that suggested the judges had improperly accounted for an element of Chiles’s routine. Her new score was enough to leapfrog her into third place, and she bounced around the arena shouting and laughing at her change in fortune as an emotionally whiplashed Barbosu wept.
- Sabrina Maneca-Voinea, another Romanian gymnast who argued, separately, that she’d gotten robbed by the judges too, having been assessed a deduction for stepping out of bounds despite not having actually, you know, stepped out of bounds. Had that penalty not been given, her score would have been good for third place. But because her coaches didn’t raise any challenges in the moment, her later attempts to complain were for naught.
On the day of the competition, Chiles was deemed to have prevailed. She and Biles were up on the podium together, and the two knelt and hailed Andrade in a joyous display of best-on-best respect and celebration. But within a week, reports trickled out that an alphabet soup of governing bodies had declared takesies backsies: An inquiry-to-the-inquiry determined that Team USA’s initial challenge of the score had come after a minute and four seconds—four seconds too late. Which meant, to use the IOC’s euphemism, that the bronze medal was ordered to be “reallocated” from Chiles to Barbuso.
As of this writing, an appeal to the decision is pending, and the outcome remains, fittingly, up in the air. I guess it wouldn’t be an Olympics without an unpleasant judging-related controversy, but this one isn’t deliciously nefarious like others from the past—it’s more like what the French call les incompetents. So to speak.
Winner: NBCUniversal Media, LLC
“Peacock is the real winner at the Paris Olympics,” trumpeted Fast Company. “NBC’s ‘Gold Zone’ Has Perfected Live Olympics Coverage and There’s No Going Back,” agreed Sports Illustrated. “Can we turn on the Gold Zone?” chirped my kids every morning, and it was my honor to respond with a resounding, “Heck yes.”
But what really spoke volumes about the success of the ambitious Olympic coverage from the NBC-cock Family of Streamworks(TM) wasn’t all the media-nerd discussion about how well it was working—it was the certain blissful silence that ensued from so many. Instead of talking heads and columnists grumbling about the network gatekeeping coverage, or Twitter users whining about live events getting spoiled yet refusing to log off, everybody kind of just … watched sports and enjoyed the ride.
There was a presentation for everyone, whether you prefer your coverage to be quippy and bite-sized, sweeping and emo, or absolutely stuffed to the gills with announcers chuckling and saying things like, “I’ll tell ya what, is anyone having more fun than this guy?” over footage of Snoop Dogg in the stands, peering theatrically over his sunglasses and earning half a mil per day (worth it!). This is what it’s all about, and I say that sincerely.
Loser (?): Colin Jost’s Tootsies
I quite liked the tonal blend of Colin Jost’s body of work as the Tahitian Surfing Correspondent: part “Is this a bit?,” part septic delirium, part Christian Slater’s character in Very Bad Things mixed with Lester Nygaard’s festering wound in Season 1 of Fargo—all adding up to 100 percent going to get eaten alive on some Weekend Update bit featuring Sarah Sherman as a piece of coral and Bowen Yang as the sea.
Winner: Noah Lyles’s Clavicle
The 100-meter dash was a lot like that old Seinfeld bit about a photo finish, where a few pixels are the difference between “greatest guy in the world” and “never heard of ’em.” Bless Lyles’s mighty clavicle—and the prescient specificity written into the rulebook!
Loser: My Nerves on the Morning of Thursday, August 8
After nearly two weeks of good vibes only, Thursday, August 8, was an unlucky Day 13 for the Americans, a glimpse into what the entire Games could have felt like if a few things had broken differently.
In the span of a few tense hours, a popular women’s heptathlete, Chari Hawkins, was effectively eliminated from competition after a preventable mistake on the high jump; her subsequent breakdown went unfortunately viral. Lyles, the 200-meter gold medal favorite, came in third—fine, except then he shamelessly told the world he’d been running around with COVID. The dynastic women’s water polo team, leading their semifinal game and hoping to win a fourth straight gold, was instead toppled in a comeback shootout by Australia. (They would ultimately miss the podium altogether after a loss to the Dutch in the bronze medal game.)
With all this hanging in the air, the USA men’s basketball team found itself staring down a 17-point deficit to a Nikola Jokic–led Serbian team that simply could not miss. Ruh-roh …
Winner: The Dream Trio—Still Got It!
It really did seem like Serbia was going to advance to the gold medal game and leave the NBA’s best mired in discourse. Instead, some famous veterans—average age of 36 and two-thirds—took matters into their way-more-than-capable hands. The trio led the Americans to a 95-91 win and reminded the world how much we’re gonna miss these fellas someday too soon. (Sorry, Joel Embiid: you were wonderful in that game too, but you haven’t reached old-head status yet.)
Then, in a too-close-for-comfort gold medal game against France that left wunderkind Victor Wembanyama en larmes, the three came up big once again. Night night, they pantomimed—or perhaps it was nuit nuit—which was fitting: The older you get, the more you value a good night’s rest.
Loser: The Haters
“Winning isn’t for everyone,” went the Nike slogan throughout the Olympics. “No time for losers, ’cause we are the champions,” sang the world’s athletes during the closing ceremony, the perfect braggadocious vibe for an Olympics driven by revenge and defined by an ethos of sorry-not-sorry.
It’s so easy, and so awful, to imagine everything going very differently for a lot of the Olympic athletes who competed under the heavy weight of faster-higher-stronger expectations. If Trinity Rodman had been ever-so-slightly less onside, or if Kahleah Copper had finished with 10 points instead of a dozen, Paris 2024 could be synonymous in the American mind with phrases like “woke=choke” or “shoulda picked Caitlin Clark.” Instead, the USWNT became associated with the moniker “Triple Espresso,” while the women’s hoops team celebrated an eighth straight gold in a magnificently cocky ad (that definitely had some execs sweating bullets for a minute there!).
If Biles had stumbled just a bit, jaded viewers would’ve immediately bragged that they totally saw it coming. Instead she finished with three golds, one silver, and, possibly most satisfyingly, one adamantium-grade own of her toxic, loudmouthed former teammate MyKayla Skinner. (A pair of gold medalists, Durant and golfer Lydia Ko, both credited Biles for helping them succeed in matters of sport and posting.)
Both a rugby player and a boxer responded to bad-faith, gender-focused harassment on social media by winning medals in Paris. (The rugby team also earned some sweet, sweet capital investment.) The U.S. men’s basketball team made the most of its weapons, and then promptly disarmed its critics: Tyrese Haliburton comparing winning a gold medal to contributing nothing to a group project and getting an A anyway was an absolute swish.
I wanted to be mad when Novak Djokovic won gold in men’s singles, but the truth is I only felt love in my heart. Middle-distance runner Ingebrigtsen—a storied hater—did not make the podium in the 1,500. But! By winning gold in the 5,000-meter, he also neutralized all those who had gleefully declared his “Norwegian Method” dead, a real enemy-of-my-enemy pair of outcomes. Similarly, Lyles, who once scoffed at NBA players calling themselves world champions (“... of what? The United States?” he said) did win the 100-meter dash, yes. But! He also ended his Olympics getting clowned by the USA Basketball Twitter account. You win some, you hate some, you lose some.
Winner: The Lovers
Paris was for lovers! Such as Biles and her husband, Jonathan Owens, who received a few days of leave from Chicago Bears training camp to go do some manual scorekeeping, cheer on his GOAT wife from the stands, and even win over some of her protective stans. (I was happy that the NFL hall pass didn’t lead to too much performative grumbling from fans; it seems like only yesterday that people were losing their minds at a baseball player trying to attend the birth of his child.) Or like the couple that got engaged, or the other couple that got engaged (or the other couples-plural, or the other-other couple, or or or!)
One runner finished her race and got down on one knee in front of her boyfriend in the stands. U.S. long jumper Tara Davis-Woodhall won the gold medal and then ran into the arms of her iconically supportive husband, Hunter Woodhall, a Paralympic champion whom she met when they were teens at a track meet. And one of the most beautiful romances was the one between a legendary athlete and his fans. “I walked for about 2kms, there were about 300 people walking with me,” said former marathon champion Eliud Kipchoge after he pulled up early during this year’s event. “That’s why I don’t have my shirt, shoes. I gave them all out. Seeing that support is what motivates me.” Don’t you just love love?!
Loser: That One Google Gemini AI Ad That Was So Bad It Got Pulled
In contrast to all the gorgeous human emotion outlined above, Google’s creative team decided to feature an ad imploring children to use AI slop to write letters to their faves. Loser stuff!
Winner: Royales With Cheese
First, I learned that Yared Nuguse, who earned bronze in that legendary 1,500-meter race, only got into track because he casually ran a 5:30 mile while racing his friends to be first in line at McDonald’s and a coach took notice. Then I saw McDonald’s France post this self-deprecating branded cope in the wake of Curry’s championship performance—some real arch gold from the land of the fry. And now I’m laughing and craving, dammit! You win again, Mickey D.
Loser: The High Jump’s Harmonious Precedent
When high jumpers Gianmarco Tamberi of Italy and Mutaz Essa Barshim of Qatar opted to share first place at the Tokyo Games in 2021 rather than enter into a tiebreaking jump-off, it was hailed as an all-time example of sportsmanship and community and the brotherhood of man. But this past weekend, when two ascendant fellas were presented with the same opportunity, they chose differently. Which is how U.S. jumper Shelby McEwan wound up in sole possession of silver while New Zealander Hamish Kerr, all by his lonesome, leaped to gold. (Thank goodness for the U.S. women’s basketball team: If they hadn’t eked out that one-point win over France to tie the U.S. and China with 40 gold medals, we never would have heard the end of it.)
Winner: The Dark Art of the Pommel Horse
I called it the Darnedest Piece of Equipment prior to these Olympics, and the pommel horse lived up to its title. Yes, it may have sadly ended the all-around podium hopes of Team USA’s Frederic Richard, but it also provided one of the most fun story lines of the first week of the Games: the world getting to know the relief-pitcher-coded pommel horse specialist (and Rubik’s Cube enthusiast) Stephen Nedoroscik. His sans-spectacles performance during the team event helped the men’s gymnastics squad earn its first team medal in 16 years. Giddy up!
Loser: The Chinese Artistic Gymnasts
China may have wound up tied for the Olympic lead with 40 gold medals, but the country’s two artistic gymnastics teams only (“only,” I know) contributed two. On the women’s side, China finished with two silvers, on the beam and bar events. (To their credit, they also racked up a gleaming pair of wholesome moments.) On the men’s side, the team did win two golds—on bars and rings—but they were matched by big disappointments, including some falls off the high bar and an uncharacteristically flawed day for Zhang Boheng.
Winner: The Great Nation of St. Lucia
The Paris Games were a beautiful showcase of all the world’s finest talents, from Yusuf Dikec, the Turkish man who won a shooting silver medal while looking like he’d just rolled out of bed, to Emmanuel Wanyonyi, the Kenyan who won his country’s fifth straight 800-meter race, to Cindy Ngamba, the boxer who won the first-ever medal for the “Refugee Olympic Team” consortium that was created by the IOC in 2015. There were instances of true national dominance, like the French BMX bikers sweeping the podium, or the Dutch men’s and women’s field hockey teams both winning gold, or the Chinese diving team achieving their goal of winning gold in all eight events. There was Mijain Lopez, the Cuban Greco-Roman wrestler who won his record fifth straight gold.
But I think my favorite bit of patriotic pride was when Julien Alfred finished first in the 100-meter dash, earning her home country of St. Lucia its first-ever Olympic medal and sparking quite a fete indeed. It’s only fitting that soon, she’ll have a national holiday in her honor, too.
Loser: The Almost-Great Nation of Italy
It was supposed to be all about forza, not fourth!
Winne—Ah, Well, Nevertheless: The Italian High Jumper Who Had a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week
I was all set to declare the aforementioned defending high jump gold medalist Tamberi a certified winner, having remembered the sweet little sidebar about how he had dropped his engagement ring into the Seine during the opening ceremony and then seemingly found a way to spin straw into gold, quipping: “It will stay forever in the riverbed of the city of love.” Aw, so cute, right? Except that just a second ago, when I Googled the story so that I could link to it here, I got hit with a more recent and more harrowing headline: Olympic ‘Nightmare’: Athlete Loses Wedding Ring—Then Vomits Blood. Thankfully, he seems to be on the mend.
Loser: The Wrestler Who Didn’t Lose Enough
I guess it could be worse. Things seemed to be going well enough for Indian women’s wrestler Vinesh Phogat—who once made headlines for bravely protesting the behavior of her federation’s leader—as she came to Paris and beat the seemingly unbeatable defending Olympic champion Yui Susaki en route to the gold medal match. Leading up to the championship, she tried everything to make her 50-kilo weight, spending hours sweating in a sauna and even cutting her hair. But when she weighed in at 100 measly grams over—roughly the weight of a few wedges of a clementine orange—she was automatically disqualified. India finished the Games with just six medals—five bronze, one silver, no gold.
Winner: Graphic Design Being One’s Passion
The Paris Olympics were so, so visually stunning, with a pleasantly pastel color story and hot air balloon–inspired cauldron and a slew of lovely venues highlighting the Eiffel Tower, Roland Garros, Versailles, and Place de la Concorde. But it was the little breakdancing stadium that most made me smile—that is, until I said, “Ahh, look, the background is a giant boom box!” and my kids said the five words that no millennial parent should ever have to hear: Mama, what’s a boom box?
Loser: All the Breakdancers Who Aren’t B-Girl Raygun
Related: I feel a little bit glum for people like Canadian gold medalist Phil Wizard or Japanese champion B-Girl Ami. First, the Olympics kind of randomly decide to try on your sport as a costume, unexpectedly featuring breakdancing for the first—and probably also the last—time ever. (One well-known breakdancer called the whole thing “immoral, illogical, and insulting.”) So you make the best of it, spinning and freezing and charming your way toward glory! But then the entire world goes both ironically and earnestly crazy for … B-Girl Raygun, a writhing, kangaroo-hopping 36-year-old Australian academic who bravely answers the question: What if Left Shark went on Shark Tank, down undah?
Winner: [With an Extremely Heavy Sigh] B-Girl Raygun
“So many people don’t know anything about it,” B-Girl Raygun told the Sydney Morning Herald about breakdancing. “[They think] it’s this stale joke from the ’80s.” After her Olympic showing, though, she’s now become something of a face of the sport—a fresh joke from the ’20s, if you will.
Normally, this kind of infamy might be rough, but in the case of this particular competitor, perhaps there’s a silver lining. As an academic whose PhD work is dedicated to the study of breakdancing and whose published journal articles include references to “the co-option of break dancing by the Olympics,” this scholar-dancer could potentially dine out on her Paris experience for years. It’s Raygun’s office hours, and we’re just living in ’em.
Loser: The Shamefully Thirsty Atlantic Coast Conference
Speaking of university-adjacent weirdos … nice try, ACC.
Winner, Loser, Who’s to Say?: The NCAA
On the one hand, the Paris Games were a feather in the cap of American collegiate athletics. Not only did all manner of Team USA medalists, from Steph Curry to Suni Lee, pass through the gauntlet of college sports on their way to international glory, but so too did plenty of winners from other countries, like the French swimmer Marchand (Arizona State) and the continually world-record-breaking machine Mondo DuPlantis (LSU). All told, more than a thousand former, current, or incoming student-athletes competed in the 2024 Games.
On the other hand, it’s unclear how smoothly that NCAA-Olympic pipeline will continue to flow in the future. Currently, a whole lot of the money that goes toward more niche college sports comes in via powerhouse programs like football and basketball. But as new revenue-sharing arrangements between schools and their athletes begin kicking in over the coming years, the landscape could start looking rather different.
Loser: Andy Murray (In a Good Way!)
[Extremely C’mon, Andy! voice] Go on, then, Andy! Murray may not have lasted in the tournament in these Games, nor was he really expected to, but even his losses felt like victories. Tennis sure is gonna miss that ol’ misbegotten lad.
Winner: Los Angeles 2028
Sunday night’s closing ceremony commenced the transition from one Summer Olympiad to the next, from Paris 2024 to Los Angeles 2028, from the proudly graceful Eiffel Tower to the even more proudly garish Hollywood sign. (Tom Cruise was involved, obv—though his part mostly just made me feel nostalgic for Her Royal Majesty the Queen’s similarly wacky high jinks on the occasion of London 2012.) For the American organizers now taking over, the Paris Games must have felt like both a best-case scenario and a pair of huge shoes to fill. There’s no engine for domestic enthusiasm and attention better than Team USA racking up medals for two weeks straight, and there’s no marketing initiative more effective than all the generous, comprehensive broadcast TV and digital programming we all just watched. So yeah, no pressure, L.A. folks!
Before we get to L.A. 2028, though, there’s plenty of other global competition to help keep us sharp in the interim. Like the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, where maybe, just maybe, we’ll finally get to see Connor McDavid play Olympic hockey for Canada. Or men’s World Cup soccer later that year, hosted by North America—hopefully in a way that doesn’t replicate what happened last month at the chaotic Copa América final in Miami. Or, in just a couple of weeks, the Paralympics, which are also being held in Paris and will feature athletes ranging from Woodhall to two different Survivor castaways, from Italian fencer Bebe Vio going for her third straight gold to 53-year-old Japanese cyclist Keiko Sugiura looking to defend her title.
The Olympic Games are always ending somewhere and kicking off someplace else. The athletes are always losing because they know that’s what it takes for one of them to finally win. My parents fly back east; I miss hearing them futzing around with the remote and searching for Gold Zone at dawn’s earliest light. Breakdancing is out in 2028; lacrosse is in. Mary Ellen Clark stands on that Barcelona diving platform in 1992 in perpetuity. Simone Biles pikes her way into my children’s consciousness—whether she’ll remain there for a week or for a lifetime we can’t yet know, though I can guess. My global command center turns back into a couch, like Cinderella’s carriage withering into a pumpkin, and the sporting zeitgeist settles back into its comfortable, miserable debates about the New York Jets. The world feels a little smaller, but maybe that’s because my spirit grew. You’ll never win ’em all, but that’s no reason not to try.
