OPINION
Rex Ahdar
Professor Rex Ahdar, Otago University
The XXXIII Olympiad staged in Paris is over and it has been a best-ever Olympic games for New Zealand, with 20 medals, 10 of them gold. If one likes to boast, let the record show NZ finished third in terms of gold medals per capita, and fourth in total medals per capita (Nevill-Manning). What are some of the notable highlights and lowlights?
The best
The New Zealand highlights were plentiful. The high jump gold of Dunedin-born Hamish Kerr, along with the two gold medals on the cycling track won by Ellesse Andrews, are my favourites. Andrews won all her sprint races in commanding fashion. It was Snell-like (or rather, Carrington-like) domination by the Christchurch woman. Kerr, by contrast, had many close shaves and his near elimination was not good for my blood pressure. In the heats, he had two misses at 2.20m before clearing the bar on his third and final attempt. The same was true in the finals next day, where he cleared 2.31m only on his third attempt. The finalists bowed out one-by-one, until just Kerr and the American Shelby McEwen remained. After three efforts to clinch the gold, Kerr did it on his fourth attempt. It was high drama and terrific viewing.
In terms of the games overall, I enjoyed Leon Marchand, Katie Ledecky and Faith Kipyegon. Marchand was the king of the pool and France’s deserved hero. Ledecky claimed the 800m and 1500m freestyle titles to confirm her legendary status. Kipyegon won the 1500m for an unprecedented third consecutive time and romped away in the home straight to win by an unconscionably large margin. And Ryan Crouser’s third consecutive gold in the shot put was also most pleasing.
The worst and the most dubious
The opening ceremony was a distasteful, sacrilegious spectacle. No more needs to said.
The gold medal victories by Imane Khelif (Algeria) and Lin Yu-ting (Taiwan) in the women’s welterweight and featherweight divisions respectively were (pace Adam Julian of Newsroom) travesties. The two are, from what we can gather, biological, XY-chromosomal males and both exhibited superior physical strength to make their bouts decidedly one-sided ‘contests’. Disgraceful.
The River Seine had been supposedly been cleaned up for the Olympics. I doubt it. A river in a city (proper) of 2.1m (within 105 square km) is simply not the right waterway for Olympic open water swims.
Pan Zhanle broke the world record for the 100m freestyle (now 46.40) and won by an unheard of full body length. The murky, unresolved PED allegations surrounding the Chinese swim team have not gone away.
Max Brown and Grant Clancy finished a distant last in the C2 canoeing, which prompted paddling great Ian Ferguson to remark it made him feel “very sad” and it “put a little dent in our silver fern.” (Goile)
The addition of skateboarding, breaking (see below), sport climbing, basketball 3x3 and the continuation of surfing, beach volleyball and (gasp) rugby sevens remain as unwelcome accretions to an already bloated event. But put me in the pillory, I’m a traditionalist.
The heartbreakingly close calls
Hayden Wilde led for most of the running leg in the triathlon only to be overtaken in the last 150m by his British rival, Alex Yee. In an event (1.5km swim, 40km cycle, 10km run) lasting one and three quarter hours, Wilde lost by just six seconds. Wilde showed class and true sportsmanship, sitting down near the finishing line with his arm around his equally-exhausted friend and great rival. It was one of the great photos of the Olympics.
Dunedin’s Erika Fairweather missed bronze by just 0.26 seconds against a hall of fame trio (Ledecky, Ariarne Titmus and Summer McIntosh) in the 400m individual medley. My favourite swimmer, Adam Peaty, missed a third consecutive 100m breastroke gold by a mere whisker (0.02 seconds). He tested positive for Covid the next day.
Brash American Noah Lyles took the 100m by the narrowest of margins. The official scoreboard had both Kishane Thompson (Jamaica) and the American at 9.79 seconds (coincidentally, the winning time of Ben Johnson in 1988), but the third decimal place revealed Lyles had prevailed by five-thousandths of a second (.005). It seems a shame that a tie cannot be pronounced, and a shared medal granted, when the time is identical down to two decimal places. Oh well.
The major disappointments
I was sad for Lewis Clareburt, Aimee Fisher and Tom Walsh who failed to perform to their best and, accordingly, missed out on medals. There may be more Olympics for both Clareburt and Fisher, yet they are, in my opinion, the two hardest sports to train for and another four years of early-morning grind is not for the fainthearted.
The most satisfying and the most unsung heroes
The “Butcher”, the rugged (again, Dunedin-born) man from Alexandra, Finn Butcher, claimed the inaugural kayak cross. The artificial, white-water rapids course, with contact between kayaks allowed, is a sure-fire winner.
Largely unsung was the remarkable feat by 41-year-old Cuban wrestler, Mijain Lopez. Competing in the 130kg class in Greco-Roman grappling, “El Terrible” secured a fifth consecutive gold medal in same event and is now in a class of one.
In the men’s 200m, the hitherto unheralded speedster from Botswana, Letsile Tebogo thwarted Noah Lyles bid for the 100m/200m double and won Africa’s first sprint title.
In gymnastics, Carlos Yulo from the Philippines took two golds (floor exercise and vault) and no doubt sent his medal-starved nation into raptures.
Javelin gold-medallist Arshad Nadeem of Pakistan vanquished Indian superstar Neeraj Chopra in a spicy final.
Perhaps the most satisfying gold medallist of all was Yarin Shriki. The Israeli won the 69 kg class in jiu-jitsu after surviving the Nova music festival massacre on 7 October last year. He dedicated the victory to his best friend (Yohai Ben Zecharia) who did not survive the carnage.
The weird
The most inept competitor in the silliest Olympic event ever is now infamous. Dr Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn displayed extraordinary chutzpah to present a breakdancing routine that could only described, to a non-connoisseur like myself, as hilarious. The judges in this inaugural (and now mercifully discontinued) “breaking” competition gave her zero for her three ‘battles’. The Australian Chef de Mission, Anna Meares, stoutly defended Dr Gunn against the nasty misogynistic ‘trolls’ who dared to mock this ‘courageous’ effort (Larkin). Perhaps it will all turn out well for the Macquarie University lecturer who can marshal her Olympic experience and doctoral study (her Macquarie Ph D thesis being “Deterritorializing gender in Sydney’s breakdancing scene: a B-girl’s experience of B-boying”) to explain the deeper, decolonised, postmodernist meaning of her empowering kinetic art.
Sources
Nevill-Manning Olympic Medals per Capita
Goile ‘A little dent in our silver fern’: Ian Ferguson takes swipe at C2 chaos at Paris Olympics | Stuff
Oldereide Olympic Cheating Scandal Erupts After Chinese Swimmer Pan Zhanle’s Gold Medal Win | Bored Panda
Swimming NZ's bold goals submerged in Paris – Newsroom
(10) GOLDEN MOMENT | Hamish Kerr | Men's High Jump | Paris Olympics 2024 – YouTube
Julien Awards time: The best (and worst) of Paris – Newsroom
