If you knew nothing else about what a topsy-turvy couple of years the Wuhan Coronavirus and official response to it bequeathed to the world, you might guess that something big and destabilizing had happened just by watching "Tokyo 2020" signage on TV in the summer of 2021.
An Olympics without spectators seems wrong. I don't envy the people in charge of programming the choices they've had to make, either. But in spite of those constraints, a few athletes and athletic stories nevertheless inspire:
- Filipino weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz impressed me with her improvised water-jugs-on-a-yoke training tools.
- American Lee Kiefer -- gold medal in fencing while going to medical school? Whoa!
- American swimmer Lydia Jacoby has the best cheering section I've seen. And she plays bluegrass bass in whatever spare time she can find.
- It was fun to see Poland win the inaugural 4x400m mixed relay.
- Ya gotta love a diver who qualifies for the Olympic final at age 41, as Japan's Ken Terauchi did.
- Wrestling gold medalist Tamyra Mensah-Stock made news for enthusing about how much she loves representing America. I like that. She's great. But if she had a chat with NBC commentator Mike Tirico, I missed it.
The people writing human interest stories about American athletes haven't dug as deep as they might have had to in the good old days when Sports Illustrated was running stories by the likes of Frank Deford, but the one-two finish by Katie Ledecky and Erica Sullivan in the 1,500 meters also moved me. Ledecky has charisma, a metric mile is a really long swim, and anyone who medals in that event is amazing.
Ditto the one-two finish for the US in the women's 400-meter hurdles by Sydney McLaughlin and Dalilah Muhammed. Both women enthusiastically endorsed their "iron sharpens iron" rivalry, and both seem appropriately regal on the track.
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