Monday, August 15, 2016

Your Olympic moment for today

Yeah, the water's still green (no matter how the IOC tries to spin it). Yeah, Rio's still a dangerous place at night (just ask swimmer Ryan Lochte, robbed at gunpoint, and the media members on the bus whose windows got shot out).

But it's still, you know, the Olympics.

The athletes always redeem whatever mess the corrupt officials who run the Games make of things, and that's surely been true this time around. You watch the greatest Olympian in history, Michael Phelps Cyborg, and you forget the rest. You watch Katie Ledecky Also Cyborg win by six nautical miles, and all the bad becomes background noise. Ditto Usain Bolt winning the 100 for the third straight Olympics, and a South African named Wayde Van Niekerk running one of the greatest races of all time in the 400, and a young Ethiopian woman named Almaz Ayana destroying the world record in the 10,000 meters by 14 seconds in her first Olympics.

The athletes always redeem the Games. It's why we cheer. It's why we pound tabletops and shout. It's why stuff like this happens.

Cheering for the Olympics as a security threat. Every day it's something new.

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