Heroes and villains at Rio 2016 ABOVE; Usain Bolt sprinted into the record books with his Triple Treble of Olympic gold medals in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay. RIGHT: US swimmer Ryan Lochte won gold, but lost lucrative sponsorship deals for his attempt to soil Brazil’s name
ABOVE; Usain Bolt sprinted into the record books with his Triple Treble of Olympic gold medals in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay. RIGHT:  US swimmer Ryan Lochte won gold, but lost lucrative sponsorship deals for his attempt to soil Brazil’s name

 Usain Bolt sprinted into the record books with his Triple Treble of Olympic gold medals in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay. 

Hildegarde : The Arena

The curtain came down on the 2016 summer Rio Olympic Games. Zimbabwe was represented, and our athletes did their best, although the nation hopes that the next time Team Zimbabwe goes to the Olympics, it will bring home medals – gold, silver and bronze. All. We miss the Kirsty Coventry days when the national anthem was sung at the Olympics as the Zimbabwean flag was hoisted into the air. Memories, memories. In Shona we say, “Matakadya kare haanyaradzi mwana.”

At Rio 2016 there were the beautiful, the ugly, the bold and not so bold.

The beautiful first. Not that the other athletes are not worth mentioning, but sentiments have been expressed globally that 30-year-old Jamaican triple-triple gold medallist Usain Bolt will be sorely missed on the athletics field, after he announced that Rio would be his last Olympic Games.

Sports writers and commentators ran out of adjectives to describe Bolt’s amazing talent, but many agreed that he was the greatest athlete of all time, while others say he is “the fastest man alive”, and the International Olympic Committee called him the “World Athlete of the Century”.

But it was BBC News’ Nalina Eggert who summed up the triple-triple sprinter’s greatness in figures and facts.

Neggert, who wrote before the men’s 4 x 100m relay said in all Olympics finals he participated, Bolt ran “for only 114 seconds… not even a full two minutes”. (See table BELOW, courtesy of BBC News)

This is the stuff that greatness is made of – bagging gold medals and smiling all the way to the bank.

Citing statistics from the Associated Press, Neggert also says that when the preliminary rounds are included, “Bolt has spent only 325 seconds – a little under five and a half minutes – on the Olympics track … meaning that he has picked up a gold medal for every 36 seconds spent on the track, including the qualifying rounds.”

Now to the villains – the four swimmers from Team USA, who made false claims that they had been robbed at gunpoint in Rio!

Led by Ryan Lochte, who has won 12 Olympics medals, the four swimmers thought that their false report would be bought hook, line and sinker, instil fear in other athletes and dampen the Olympic spirit.

The diligence of the Brazilian police exposed their naked lies and the intent to smear Brazil’s name, forcing the US Olympic Committee to eventually apologise to Brazil for the fiasco caused by the four swimmers.

Lochte apologised much later: “I should have been much more responsible in how I handled myself and for that am sorry to my teammates, my fans, my fellow competitors, my sponsors and the hosts of this great event,” he said in a statement posted on social media.

But it was too little, too late, as he is learning with each day passing that there is a price to pay for every deed – good or bad – and sometimes you pay dearly for something you thought would bring fame and fortune.

At the time of going to print AFP reported that Lochte had “lost four sponsorship deals – a major financial hit for the embattled gold medallist”.

But, was Lochte and company playing into the bigger picture where we saw the Western media’s onslaught to discredit Brazil’s hosting of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games created a war zone-like scenario, as they came up with one claim after another, just like they did when South Africa hosted the FIFA 2010 World Cup finals.

 US swimmer Ryan Lochte won gold, but lost lucrative sponsorship deals for his attempt to soil Brazil’s name

US swimmer Ryan Lochte won gold, but lost lucrative sponsorship deals for his attempt to soil Brazil’s name

For Brazil, the reportage shifted from the “poor standards” of the Olympics venue to the Zika virus.

However, Rio’s mayor in a press briefing on Tuesday said they had received “1,17 million tourists during the Olympic Games, including 410 000 foreigners, and zero cases of Zika was reported”.

Brazil’s internal political squabbles could not also have come at a better time – with the democratically elected President Dilma Rousseff being suspended. She could not attend the Olympics, and her impeachment was slated to start four days after the Games.

All this cast a shadow on the successful hosting of the Games, but Brazil did it, despite the odds.

On the other hand, Lochte and company thought that the big brother mentality of discrediting other nations would work.

To add insult to injury, one of his colleagues thought that an $11 000 payoff could restore the damage the athletes had done to Brazil’s good name, for the Bible says in Proverbs 22:1, “a good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than gold and silver”.

Unfortunately, Lochte and partners loved gold and silver, rather than their good names, and the host’s good name was affected in the process.

Zimbabwe is not new to such made-up stories from some US citizens, whose objective is to cast the country in bad light.

Some readers might recall a special in the Chicago Tribune’s travel section written by a Gaby Plattner, and published on June 6, 1999 titled, “Choppy skies: A white knuckle flight on Air Zimbabwe”.

Plattner, giving a first person account claimed that the Airzim pilot was locked out of the cockpit (a lie), and he got a big axe: “Without ceremony, he proceeded to chop down the cockpit door.

“We were rooted to our seats as we watched him. Once he managed to chop a hole in the door, he reached inside, unlocked the door, and let himself back in.

“Then he came back on the loudspeaker, his voice a little shakier this time than before. ‘Ah, ladies and gentlemen, we just had a little problem there, but everything is fine now. We have plans to cover every eventuality, even pilots getting locked out of their cockpits. So relax and enjoy the rest of the flight. We should be landing in about 20 minutes.’”

That’s some US visitors for you, in the process, life goes on for them!

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