The 2024 Summer Olympics are over.
Long live the Olympics.
By any standards, this was a great Summer Games — thrilling races, unbelievable finishes, unexpected results. A lot of expected results, too, which is fine. I'm sorry, but if the U.S. men's basketball team hadn't come back from 17 points down in the second half to Serbia, it would have taken a little shine off of things. If the U.S. women's basketball team hadn't come back from being 10 down in the second half to France, it would have been a disaster.
Not to worry. Never bet against Steph Curry or A'ja Wilson.
I watched a ton of the Olympics, partly for professional reasons, mostly because I just love watching. I couldn't tell you the rules of team handball, but man I have a blast watching it played (though once every four years is probably enough).
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Even I couldn't watch everything (NBC seems to finally have cracked the code, with Peaco*ck and other platforms, of how to broadcast everything all at once and still make it compelling). But these are the five best and worst things I saw during the Games. (I couldn't decide which category Tom Cruise rappelling and skydiving and motorcycle riding in the closing ceremonies fit into — it was so dumb, but so American — that I'll just leave it here.)
The best of the 2024 Olympics
The Gold Zone
This was my preferred method for watching during the day. Peaco*ck offered it as a kind of an Olympics version of the NFL Red Zone. They bounced around from event to event, showing the most compelling competitions, usually ones in which a medal was at stake (thus the name). If you didn't want to miss a minute of the parallel bars or whatever, that was available, too. But this offered handy one-stop shopping to keep you up to date on everything.
Pommel Horse Guy
This refers, of course, to U.S. men's gymnast Stephen Nedoroscik, who helped his team to the bronze medal and won a bronze in the individual pommel horse. With his thick glasses and Rubik's Cube-solving skills, he was the little nerd who could. (He's also a world-class athlete.) But he's representative of so many unlikely heroes, who are now all the more famous because of meme culture. Like Yusuf Dikec, the Turkish shooter who won silver while looking like somebody's dad, hand in pocket, wearing his regular glasses, not the tricked-out paraphernalia many of the shooters wear. Raise a glass for the regular folks (who, again, are anything but regular).
The ubiquitous Snoop Dogg
I'm sure some people were sick of Snoop by the time the Olympics were over. NBC sent him around everywhere. Swimming with Michael Phelps. Decked out for dressage and escargot with his pal Martha Stewart. Riding the bus with Team USA men's basketball. In the stands cheering for seemingly every event. It was exhausting even just to watch. It was also fun, because Snoop is fun. He gets the assignment, as the popular phrase goes. He's funny, he's relatable and he never for a minute stops being Snoop Dogg. If he doesn't play a big role in the LA Games in 2028, I'll be shocked.
Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky, duh
As much fun as an upset can be — Cole Hocker sneaking in to win the men's 1,500 meters after an NBC feature on the two favorites sniping at each other was especially satisfying — there is something comforting about true all-time legends like Biles and Ledecky doing what we expect them to. Which is a win. It's also nerve-wracking because we want it so bad. Biles came back from a lot to get back on top; Ledecky never left. They're both so great that we don't appreciate them enough, though over time we probably will. We certainly should.
The men's 100 meters
If you had to pick a single best competition from the 2024 Summer Games, it would be this. Noah Lyles of the U.S. beat Kishane Thompson of Jamaica by .005 seconds. For context, and this is one of my favorite fun facts from the whole thing, the difference between them was 20 times shorter than it takes to blink your eye. This is, clearly, insane. It was a photo finish and then some. NBC's track announcer Leigh Diffey botched the call, naming Thompson the winner (to his credit,Diffey owned up to it); in this case, waiting to see the winner declared in a finish so close it was impossible for the human eye to discern was the way to go. Silence is golden and all that.
The worst of the 2024 Olympics
Performative outrage over the opening ceremony
If this were a competitive event, the U.S. would have added more to its gold-medal haul. First, it was the opening ceremony, which lasted about as long as it takes to read "War and Peace," and which included, in addition to about 10,000 other things, an actor playing the Greek god Dionysus at a table with drag queens. Did anyone even notice it live? They certainly did after they saw it about a gazillion times on social media, where some Christians were offended because they thought it looked like Leonardo da Vinci's painting of the Last Supper, and that it was ridiculing it. This, of course, led to threats of boycotts. And how did that work out?
Viewer boycotts
Remember when all those self-righteous people were going to boycott the NFL because Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem to protest racial inequality and police brutality? In 2023, 93 of the top 100 TV shows were NFL games. The supposed boycotts of the Olympics were roughly as successful. Viewership was up 82% from the Tokyo Games in 2021 (though, granted, those were delayed a year by COVID-19). There's a reason so many people watched. For one thing, it was great, pure and simple. For another, the Games provided a nice respite from all of the divisive bickering and politicking that seem to make up so much of our lives. For most of us, they did, anyway.
Performative outrage, the Imane Khelif edition
Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu Ting were at the center of controversy because the disgraced International Boxing Association, which is no longer recognized by the Olympics, disqualified them in 2023, claiming they didn't meet "eligibility rules." The IBA president said they had XY chromosomes. However, they weren't given a testosterone test, and we don't know the results of the IBA tests, anyway. But the usual crowd of folks like Donald Trump, Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling jumped right in, complaining about the Olympics letting men fight women; others claimed they were trans. They aren't. Both Khelif and Ting were born women and have always fought as women. It was the perfect vehicle for people who want to get mad about something getting mad about something, even when it isn't true. For their part, Khelif and Ting both won gold medals.
Medal stripping
U.S. gymnast Jordan Chiles won a bronze medal in the floor exercise but, due to a technicality, was stripped of it by the International Olympic Committee. It has to do with an appeal not being made within a one-minute deadline; later U.S. officials said they have video that proves the appeal was made within the allotted time. It was all weird and ugly and confusing and a shame, since the competition itself was first-rate. Ideally, medal winners are decided by competition, not bureaucracy.
The AI takeover
OK, this isn't all bad. I thought the daily recaps by an AI recreation of the legendary Al Michaels were actually pretty good, though the implications for voice talent are probably chilling. And AI was used to help decide who won races, along with other technological breakthroughs. But none of that makes up for the Google Gemini commercial "Dear Sydney," in which a little girl wants to write a fan letter to U.S. hurdler and sprinter Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (who won two gold medals). It has to be just right, the girl's father says — so let's get Gemini, Google's AI system, to help. Ugh. Come on, dude, let your daughter express herself. Save the AI for Al Michaels. For what it's worth, people hated the commercial so much Google pulled it before the Olympics ended.
Al Michaels' AI Olympics voice scores:Google commercials do not
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