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The tourists are checking out of their hotels. The venues are having their sponsored signs reinstated. The medals are awarded. Some are even at home already, encased in special presentational cabinets or, if left exposed to the elements, degrading alarmingly quickly.
Yes, the Olympics are almost over. But dry your eyes and prepare to stand, if you are able, for one final time as we recognise our alternative medallists for Paris 2024.
Most disappointed tourist
Bronze: The wife of Gianmarco Tamberi
Silver: Adam Peaty
Gold: Italian swimming commentator
Italian high jumper Tamberi had the honour of holding his country’s flag for the opening ceremony. Unfortunately, he was overeager with his waving duties and his wedding ring fell into the Seine. Peaty was unimpressed with the food on offer in the athlete’s village. “I like my fish and people are finding worms in it,” he said. “It’s just not good enough.” Fair enough. And spare a thought for the world’s journalists who have had to cope with seriously suboptimal coffee in the media centres. This predictably did not fly with our colleagues from Italy, who complained that it tasted as if it had been made from water from the Seine.
People’s champion
Bronze: Bob the cap catcher
Silver: Raygun
Gold: Snoop Dogg
As anyone who has been to an Olympics will tell you, it is the volunteers who are the real stars. Well, aside from the athletes. But full marks nevertheless to Bob the cap catcher, the Speedo-trunked hero who dived into the pool to rescue a cap which had sunk to the bottom. Raygun gave us Australia’s answer to Eddie the Eagle with her efforts in the breaking but Snoop Dogg was the ubiquitous MVP of Paris with his effortless low-key laughs and a genuinely punishing schedule that seemed designed to take him to all 476 of this summer’s sports.
Least Olympian behaviour
Bronze: France v Argentina
Silver: Tom Craig
Gold: Canada spying
Some literal Argie-bargy from the French football team, whose anger spilled over at the end of their quarter-final against Argentina in Bordeaux, quite understandably given the racist provocation of the country’s Copa America squad last month. Australia hockey player Tom Craig’s arrest for allegedly attempting to buy cocaine was not really in the spirit of things either. But for sheer naughtiness it has to be Bev Priestman, Canada women’s football coach, who was sacked for her team’s drone-based surveillance of an opponent’s set-piece training.
Best photo
Bronze: Floor exercise podium
Silver: Duplantis’s record-breaker
Gold: Miracle of Medina
Not often have we seen Simone Biles on anything other than the top spot of an Olympic podium, but she finished second in the women’s floor exercise final with her American team-mate Jordan Chiles taking bronze on the day. They knelt to salute the winner, Brazilian Rebeca Andrade who had clinched gold. Pole-vaulter Mondo Duplantis broke the world record and the zoomed-out shot, pole falling away as he had yet to reach the glorious apex of his jump, captured the brilliance of the moment. But it took a trip to Tahiti for the best image of the Games, where surfer Gabriel Medina appeared to be floating eerily above the waves, pointing to the sky with his board doing the same in his wake.
Best future adversary for James Bond
Bronze: Raven Saunders
Silver: Yusuf Dikec
Gold: Kim Ye-ji
Saunders looked extraordinary in the shot-put qualifiers, wearing a full face mask, glasses and gold teeth grills. But Turkish pistol shooter Dikec had an actual gun, and played it very cool with neither the ear protectors nor goggles favoured by most of his competitors. Notable among them Kim, whose unparalleled coolness in glasses and backwards cap stole the show in the women’s 10m pistol competition.
Most satisfying Team GB gold
Bronze: Women’s quad sculls
Silver: Tom Pidcock
Gold: Keely Hodgkinson
“I’ve heard reports that rowing’s quite boring,” said Hannah Scott after her team took gold from the Netherlands with the last stroke of the race. Pidcock became king of the man-made mountain with his astonishing come-from-behind-despite-puncture victory, another who won his race right at the death. But no such drama for Hodgkinson, overwhelming favourite for the 800m and who ran a beautifully composed race. Calm under pressure, no drama required, a highly unusual feeling for British supporters who are usually made to suffer for their golds.
Sport we would happily lose for Los Angeles 2028
Bronze: Judo
Silver: Surfing
Gold: Breaking
Judo is a sport you tune into every four years expecting fireworks before quickly remembering it never provides them. The old criticism of golf on the TV is that it is mostly televised sky. Surfing is televised sea, or more accurately, televised people bobbing in the sea and waiting for a wave to come. It rarely does and one great photo does not justify an entire sport. Breaking felt like a regrettable mistake for all concerned within about five minutes of starting on Friday. Good to try something new, but let’s try a new something new next time and never speak of it again.
Biggest organisational error
Bronze: Upside-down Olympic flag
Silver: No air con in the village
Gold: Swimming in the Seine
Good to start as you mean to go on by upsetting several groups of people with the opening ceremony. The Catholics did not like The Last Supper parody, the South Koreans did not like being introduced as North Korea, but raising the Olympic flag the wrong way up takes the podium spot for its good old-fashioned ineptitude. Much chat of an environmentally conscious Games, which meant water-based “geothermal cooling” in the athlete’s quarters that organisers said would mean temperatures six degrees lower than outside. All well and good until it reaches 35°C, as it did a couple of times in Paris. But there can be only one winner and that is the optimistic decision to force triathlon and marathon swimmers to do their business in the river, home to dangerously high amounts of the Parisian population’s business. Several postponements followed, plus some horrifying testimony from those who took part.
Most spine-tingling moment
Bronze: Stade de France sings
Silver: Leon Marchand’s first gold
Gold: Men’s 100m final
Early goosebumps on the opening weekend when the victorious French rugby sevens team were serenaded beautifully with Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien by a stadium full of people realising as one that actually it is quite fun hosting the Olympics. Then a day later the nation’s golden boy, swimming sensation Marchand, romped home in the 400m medley, with the crowd shouting “Allez!” every time his bobbing head emerged during the breaststroke leg. And however much you have been irritated by the histrionics of new fastest-man-in-the-world Noah Lyles, he contributed to an all-timer at the Stade de France in the event which, rightly or wrongly, is seen as the highlight of any summer Games. A finish so tight it required a photo to separate not just the winners but everyone from positions first to seventh. A fittingly great final for a great Olympics.
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