Can you feel the end of the Olympics coming? I can. :(
We're into the home stretch of the Olympics. The closing ceremony will be held this Sunday, and I'm going to be sad, but also excited for the upcoming Winter Olympics in 2026 in Milan, and the next summer games in 2028 in Los Angeles. Until then, let's look at what went on today, Day 12.
The 12th day of the Paris Olympics belonged to Australia. The nation had its best-ever single day at any Olympic Games ever, taking home four gold medals and two bronze. This moves Australia up to third place in total medals, behind China and the U.S. It's a distant third, though. Australia has won 18 gold medals and 41 medals total. The U.S. has won 27 gold medals and 90 medals total.
At the Paris Olympics' closing ceremonies this Sunday, the Olympic torch will be passed on to the next host city—America's best city, Los Angeles, CA, where planning is already underway for the 2028 games. This is the third time LA has hosted the games, and the organizers of LA's games are keeping a close eye on what worked and what didn't in Paris.
According to Janet Evans, chief athlete officer for LA2028 (the organizing committee of the LA Olympics) athletes' concerns over sometimes uncomfortable accommodations at the Paris games will be addressed for 2028. Decent food, beds, and air conditioning for Olympians is easy compared to the LA traffic, however. How the city's already over-burdened freeway system will deal with a huge influx of visitors remains to be seen, but one possibility being discussed is "athlete only" lanes, which is sure to work great. In any case, the organizers of the games have four years to solve this and other logistical problems the games will bring.
I've made two important Olympics discoveries over the last couple weeks. One: Rugby is the greatest sport in the Olympics. And two: The best coverage of the Olympics is Olympic Highlights with Kevin Hart and Kenan Thompson. This streaming-only show has a simple premise: Hart and Thompson riff on everything Olympics. But it's hilarious, funnier than you'd even think it would be. Whether they're chopping it up with guests like Tony Hawk and John Cena or just commenting on events, it was smart of Peacock to provide some utterly non-serious coverage to remind us all that the Olympics are supposed to be fun.
Speaking of Saturday Night Live cast members, Keenan Thompson's colleague Colin "Weekend Update" Jost was covering the surfing part of the Olympics from Tahiti, but was forced to leave the games recently due to injuries. Jost went surfing at the legendarily heavy surf at Teahupo’o early in his Olympics assignment and cut his foot on the reef. Since then, by Jost's own account, he was "in the medical tent way more than any of the athletes," due to a staff infection in his foot and an ear infection. Even covering the Olympics is dangerous.
There are a handful of Olympians in the 2024 games not representing any nation. Since Russia and Belarus are not permitted to participate in the games, athletes from those nations are competing as "individual neutral athletes" at the games. Their flag is a jade or turquoise banner depicting the AIN emblem that looks like this:
Ivan Litvinovich and Viyaleta Bardzilouskaya were the first neutral athletes to medal at the 2024 Olympics. Litvinovich won the gold in men's trampoline, and Bardzilouskaya won silver in women's trampoline.
Playing of the winning athletes' national anthem is an Olympics tradition, but as Belarus isn't competing, the Olympics organizers came up with an interesting solution—they played a piece of music that represents no nation, but kind of sounds like a national anthem. It's a masterpiece of unobtrusiveness.
Interestingly, nations can choose not to play their national anthem during the medal ceremonies for their athletes, and instead substitute another piece of music. In the 1992 Games, the former Soviet republics competed as a team known as the “Unified Team," and chose to play Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" instead of any national anthem—a classy choice.
The most badass national anthem on earth, in case you were wondering, is Algeria's. The lyrics are: “We are soldiers in revolt for truth. And we have fought for our independence. When we spoke, nobody listened to us. So we have taken the noise of gunpowder as our rhythm. And the sound of machine guns as our melody." Sadly, the music doesn't really match the intensity of the lyrics.
