My Favorite Moments from the Paris 2024 Olympics - Week 1

I have to say that I do love watching the olympics. There’s a lot to like about this quadrennial spectacle. The coming together of the world’s best athletes in the purest expression of human competition. Individual stories of athletes training their whole lives, their families scrambling for the resources to support them. Tiny countries wildly celebrating any single medal win with overflowing national pride. I’ve probably had it on every night since it began in the background while working or reading, one eye on whatever was up next.

There were a lot of exciting events…too many to fully summarize here. My most memorable moments so far (still lots left to go).....

Novak Djokovic (Serbia) - Men’s Tennis Gold Medal final

NBC didn’t even carry this (live or tape-delayed). As a big tennis fan, I really wanted to see this one. At 21, Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz is the future of tennis, while Novak, maybe the oldest active pro, is arguably the sports GOAT. Watching them play on any surface, anywhere, any time, icing the sport closer to perfection, is just sublime.

I love what Djokovic has done for tennis, but he kind of gives off kind of an Aaron Rodgers vibe, an assured arrogance in winning, rarely showing emotion as he crushes opponents like a heartless machine.

Something about playing for Serbia, maybe staring at the twilight of his tennis career, and maybe that he’s never medaled in any previous olympics, that brought out something unguarded and raw in him. He won a tight two-setter, both tiebreaks. A match that could have gone either way, just a few tense points that made the difference.

Loved seeing this side of him….

Noah Lyles (USA) - 100 Meter Sprint Men’s Gold Medal final

Now this is…just….INSANE

Eight competitors all running practically side by side. Our dude (lane 7) looks like he’d just come in third. The Jamaican and his USA teammate have their crossing foot over the line first. But we learned it’s a beam of light about chest high that you have to cross, not the line on the track. How adeptly Lyles leans in this instant makes the most miniscule, life-changing difference.

Women’s Gymnastics - Lots and Lots and Lots

There’s a lot here, and given the star power of the US team, NBC focused heavily on it. It all looks so frighteningly impossible to me. Simone Biles, triumphant in her return to the sport after her Tokyo challenges (and some other pretty tough), looked confident, almost relaxed through it all. Her mental strength perhaps coming from the satisfaction of helping out the sport’s toxic culture of what essentially amounted to systemic child abuse, an accomplishment that might go down as her most lasting achievement.

What struck me was how much of a supportive community these elite athletes seemed to form, how they hug their opponents each time they complete an event (like soldiers, perhaps only this community appreciates just how dangerous what they do really is). When other countries won specific events, the whole community seemed to celebrate it no matter which one of them emerged.

Brazil’s Rebecca Andrade beat Biles straight up for gold on floor exercise

Two Italians shocked everyone taking gold and bronze on balance beam

Celine Dion - Opening Ceremony finale - CRUSHED IT!!

I remember being on duty in the wardroom of my Navy ship nearly 35 years ago. It was a very cold Sunday night in a Canadian port. Super Bowl XXV was about to begin. Some of the guys were talking loudly as the national anthem came on, which at the time was not such a big deal. Whitney Houston began singing, and I just kinda froze and got lost in it. Nobody else there even heard it. I remember turning to a couple of the guys and said they will talk about that performance for the next 50 years.

I don’t know if that will be true of Celine Dion’s opening night show stopping closer. But considering we just saw her in a documentary looking and sounding practically near-death, the girl killed that song (L’Hymme a L’Amour, a French classic). With the typical over-the-top drama she reliably brings to everything, I looked past all that and heard something that, juxtaposed by the tricked out Eiffel Tower and the just lit Olympic caldron, gave me a similar tingle as that iconic Whitney Houston moment.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=celine+dion+olympics+2024

Imane Khelif Algerian boxer - Conservatives everywhere lose their shit

The all-familiar pose struck at the end of every boxing match. Winner. Loser.  The results are straightforward, black and white. But sadly, there is much under the skin of this montage that just made me sad.

When Italian boxer Angela Carini was stopped 46 seconds into the match because she “had never before been struck so hard in a bout with a woman” reacted in the moment, as humans do. She questioned it, as humans do. Her opponent’s unusually powerful physicality was, in the moment, startling.

What humans shouldn’t do is presume the truth without facts. The facts are that Imane Khelif was born a genetic female, has lived her entire life as female, and is competing fairly as such. Shortly after the match, when Carini calmed herself and took in those facts, that the IOC had done their diligence, she apologized. She was bitter that her olympic dream had ended so abruptly.

I remember growing up watching a white-bred female tennis world adore the likes of Chrissie Evert and Tracy Austin, only to have Martina Navratilova, a muscular, overpoweringly dominant Czech female emerge and dominate the sport for many years. Her opponents at the time lamented that she plays like a man. Her physicality challenged the whole sport at the time, eventually taking it to a higher level. Evert would get stronger and go on to take down Navratilova in two French Open finals at the twilight of her own career. Should we be questioning Serena Williams or Britney Griner for what some might characterize “unfeminine” physiques?

Certainly the rapidly evolving issues around doping, testosterone, genetic “fairness” and all of that needs to be sorted out and legislated to maintain fairness and purity in sport. But let’s let facts and data drive that debate, not culture wars started by ignorance and fear, then perpetuated by pandering politicians and public figures who look for every opportunity to leverage that ignorance and fear to their personal advantage.

I’m routing for Khelif. Not necessarily to win, but to be allowed to take some satisfaction and enjoyment from her olympic experience.

BONUS: The Vatican - Men’s Table Tennis - Silver Medal

I close with the unforgettable thrill of seeing the world’s tiniest country finally sending their first proud olympian, who shockingly won a medal. The Holy See, Pope Francis himself, described Cardinal Guisseppe Macaroni as a living miracle.

The unheralded 79-year old paddled his way through the early rounds like Forrest Gump. But in the end, a nine-year old Chinese boy finally ended the miracle run, in a spirited final.

A much younger Monsignor Macaroni (foreground right) coaching his papal ping-pong teammates

Per a Vatican spokesman, he’s already being fast-tracked for sainthood. And they’ll be back in 2028 with a discus thrower the world’s just gotta see.