Each Saturday during the ongoing apocalypse, I'll revisit an older column that ran on this site, accompanied by a handful of current observations about it at the bottom.
Because ... hey, why not?
The one below is from Aug. 21, 2016, upon the closing of the Olympics in Brazil, where five Pittsburgh women competed, three won gold medals, and our site was the only local media outlet there to cover it:
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RIO DE JANEIRO -- "We are not London. We are only what we are."
Those were the words one month ago of Eduardo Paes, mayor of Rio de Janeiro, and they were voiced without apology, without regret.
Which, magnificently, is how the Games of the XXXI Olympiad ended Sunday night.
Without apology. Without regret. With righteous pride.
There never will be a universal way to evaluate an Olympics, and I'll argue, now more than ever after my two weeks in Rio at the fifth Games I've covered, that there never should be. Every setting is different. Every security challenge is different. Every economic scenario is different. Even in pure athletics, every scope is different.
On the latter count, of course, the Brazilans got big-time lucky.
One after the other, Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt bade fantastic farewells to the Olympics as arguably the greatest participants in history. The 1-2 order makes for fun debate, but it ultimately isn't nearly as important as the fact we all got to see them show us, one final time, what's made both who they are. And that includes away from competition. Phelps had been a bit immature in previous Games, but I was blown away by his poise and class throughout. In the huddle after his final gold, he told his fellow relay swimmers, "It's an honor to have been part of this team for my last race." On the deck, he held a sign that read, "THANK YOU RIO!" while others panned the place. And Bolt, naturally, was Bolt, ever the beloved braggart. He'd boast that he'd win the race, but then when he'd do precisely that, he'd follow up by racing further around the track to pose for pictures with fans, particularly children. As if each victory were not his last, but his first.
Those two alone would have carried these Olympics, but there was more.
There was Katie Ledecky lapping the pool by Phelps-ian distances. There was Simone Biles performing at a bar higher than any gymnast has known. There was Neymar burying the penalty in the only event that, to hear them tell it, really mattered to the Brazilians. There were superpowers achieving or exceeding the most ambitious goals with the U.S. men's and women's basketball, U.S. women's rowing and, in a shamefully personal favorite founded on heritage, Serbia reclaiming its rightful throne atop water polo.
Yeah, I went there, Croatia. I did.
From the perspective of the only place I've ever lived, the Pittsburgh region produced five Olympians, all women, and three of them flew home clutching gold: Ginny Thrasher in shooting, Leah Smith in swimming, Amanda Polk in rowing. Some folks say the Olympics aren't local. These were as local as it gets. By my count, that's four local championships covered in a single summer.
The athletics were brilliant across the board:
DEJAN KOVACEVIC / DKPS, GETTYThe broader environment wasn't ideal, but it was never going to be. Not in a city of 4 million with one of the highest crime rates on the planet. Not with the highest echelon of government in turmoil. Not with the financial gap between rich and poor as large as it's ever been.
But the response was superb. As were the results: Two Olympic officials who ventured into one of Rio's infamous favelas -- or slums -- were assaulted. A media bus was hit by either a rock or a bullet driving past one of those, blowing out a couple windows. A bullet shot into the air near equestrian landed without incident inside a tent.
Am I missing anything?
In the fuller context of what Rio is when it isn't flooded by 85,000 extra military and security forces, that might have been the best possible outcome as far as safety.
Anyone remember Zika?
Oh, right. There were zero reported cases of the virus being contracted by anyone associated with the Olympics, and that shouldn't have surprised anyone, given that it's winter in South America and the mosquitoes aren't out. But then, everyone knew that, including the bug-spray companies that drummed up fears to sell more cans.
How about the venues?
There had been such a panic over the readiness of venues, to the point some were publicly calling for the Games to be postponed. But that's how these things go at any Olympics other than Beijing, where the Chinese get stuff built two years in advance, then fold their arms. Everything was up and ready in Rio. And though these places lacked the color of London or the opulence of Sochi, they were plenty good enough. The biggest blemish was a chemical discoloration that turned the water green in the diving pool, but that was drained, replaced and diving went off without a hitch.
My goodness, the ugliest event of the entire Games would prove to be one numbskull swimmer embarrassing himself, the U.S. Olympic Committee and, to an extent, all of us as Americans.
I could go deeper, comparing strengths and shortcomings to previous Olympics covered, but that just doesn't seem right this time.
Maybe the longstanding critics are right. Maybe this place shouldn't have had an Olympics at this time. Maybe the outrage should never have abated over 22,000 people being booted from their homes to clear space for the Olympic Park, even if 30,000 were similarly booted in Atlanta leading up to 1996. Maybe all Games should be held only in the handful of cities that can comfortably afford them, as we're now about to witness with the next three all coming in the Far East: PyeongChang, Tokyo and Beijing Part II.
But Rio didn't pretend to be London or Sochi. It stayed humble, even portraying its darker points of history in a stirring Opening Ceremony. It spent less than half as much as the British. It was blunt and candid about it problems, unlike the Russians.
And in the end, the Brazilians got the job done. In a way only they could have pulled off.
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A handful of observations, as promised above:
• This was the fifth Olympics I'd covered, along with Athens, Vancouver, London and Sochi, and it was the first for this site. At my first, in the summer of 2004 in Greece, Helene Elliott, the great longtime hockey writer at the Los Angeles Times, offered me this advice: "The Olympics are the worst thing you've ever covered while they're going on, the best thing you've ever covered once they're over."
Wow, that proved so true. Over all five of my Games.
For nearly a month, the time changes, the 16-hour days, the insane logistics and security delays and so much more ... the list of the top five hardest events I've ever covered were all Olympics. But Helene was equally right with the rest. Because once that closing ceremony came, once the bag was packed to fly home ... those were among the most exhilarating, professionally satisfying experiences of my life.
I was there. I did it. I'd come to a place with the planet's premier athletes and many of its premier sports journalists and had documented it all to the best of my ability for everyone back in Pittsburgh.
That column up there, with the original headline being, 'For all that Rio overcame, these Games might have been most extraordinary,' was written in precisely that mood, that spirit. Just so you know.
• Why did I go to Rio?
That was the most common question from subscribers at the time. After all, even though we had a full staff by the summer of 2016, I was still choosing the Olympics over the Pirates in full swing and the Steelers out at Latrobe. It wasn't all that popular a decision when I'd made it known.
But that's the nature of the Olympics. We don't realize how much we appreciate them, how much we appreciate the athletes, until we get to know them. And that rarely happens until they're underway. Which it did with these Games. The Phelps/Bolt stage was larger than life, and the world would soon share it. And in Pittsburgh, readers got to know these extraordinary women representing us down there, and the city applauded all three golds.
That's why I went. We're a Pittsburgh site. Part of it, sure, was to make a statement that our site could do anything. Part of it was to take advantage of my long-established relationship with the U.S. Olympic Committee. But it was mostly the chance to tell good Pittsburgh stories to a Pittsburgh audience.
• Polk's gold stood out for me. She's from Bloomfield, she trained at the Three Rivers Rowing Club on Washington's Landing, and there she was out there in the most breathtaking setting ...
... helping the heavily favored American women fulfill their destiny. And afterward, when she and I went for a walk about the complex, then met up with her family, trying to wrap that connection to our city back home felt bigger than what I'd be able to write that day. I gave it a shot.
• Four years before this coronavirus, there was the big Zika virus scare in Brazil and other parts of South America. It was carried by mosquitoes, you might recall, and it could be fatal to some people. The Olympics began under this cloud, even though it'd soon dissipate.
Zika's gone now, at least in our hemisphere, with not a single case reported since 2017. Poof!
There was a lot of fear of crime, shootings and so forth. All media were advised to stay in a safe, credentialed zone. I didn't. At all. I still went out and walked through downtown daily, even through a couple areas that were supposed to be super-scary.
I loved Rio ...
... and not just because they conveniently translated the latest issue of Green Lantern into Portuguese for my Starbucks reading material:
DEJAN KOVACEVIC / DKPS• Among my points of pride in the Rio coverage was being maybe the first American columnist down there to call B.S. on goofball swimmer Ryan Lochte's lies that, before long, were exposed and became international news. Lots of readers here didn't appreciate my initial stance, accusing me of being anti-American and other weird stuff.
Most rewarding, I felt like I'd sniffed this out by simply embracing the locals and learning from them. A couple of them gave me hard, firm explanations for why Lochte's story couldn't have been true. They turned out to be stunningly accurate.
In general, I've always believed in immersing myself in whatever setting I'm fortunate enough to visit. Really adds to life.
• We also had the best subscriber meetup ever. I'd already been communicating for years with Alexandre Giesbrecht, and this afforded an opportunity to hook up for dinner. Which we did:
DEJAN KOVACEVIC / DKPSHe'd driven six hours from Sao Paulo for that. I still hear from him almost daily, as he's one of our many -- all appreciated -- reader/editors who help keep our copy clean.
• I'd love to do another Games someday, but it's got to be the right circumstance, ideally with NHL involvement or a prominent Pittsburgh presence. Five rings isn't enough.
