Summer Olympics 2016: Winners and Losers from Day 14 in Rio
Superstar finales. Heartbreaking disappointments.
Off-the-field ridiculousness.
Another day at the 2016 Summer Olympics.
The final Friday of competition in Rio de Janeiro gave a series of athletes another opportunity to take their places on any one of those lists.
Some did what they were supposed to do. Others, to say the least, did not.
Take a look at our rundown from Day 14, and make some picks of your own in the comments section.
Winner: Usain Bolt's Race with History
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Let the debate begin.
Is Usain Bolt the Michael Phelps of track and field? Or is Phelps the Bolt of swimming?
Either way, it's clear each man deserves to be in the other's company.
Bolt snatched his ninth Olympic gold on Friday night when his anchor leg on the Jamaican 4x100-meter relay team was more than enough to overpower both Japan and the United States down the stretch.
It follows Bolt's wins in the individual 100- and 200-meter races earlier this week and marks the third straight Games in which he's managed all three—a triple-triple, if you will.
"He ended his Olympic career the way he started it in 2008," NBC's Ato Boldon said, "with a perfect golden run. All hail Usain Bolt. Perfection since 2008."
The career haul equals the ones achieved by Finnish middle- and long-distance runner Paavo Nurmi from 1920 through 1928 and American sprinter/long jumper Carl Lewis from 1984 through 1996.
And, like Phelps, Bolt put a halt to any chatter suggesting he'll stick around for another run in Tokyo 2020.
"No, definitely not," he told NBC's Lewis Johnson. "I told you guys what I was going to do. I worked hard, and I performed. I set the bar high. That’s what I came here to do."
Loser: USA Sprinters on Live TV
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There's disappointment. Then there's flat-out live-television cruelty.
The USA men's 4x100-meter relay team got a bit of both on Friday night—first when it faded late to take third behind Jamaica and Japan.
Then, as teammates Mike Rodgers, Justin Gatlin, Tyson Gay and Trayvon Bromell were parading around the track in a flag to celebrate their bronze medal, they were informed that a faulty exchange from Rodgers to Gatlin had not only taken the medal, but it had disqualified the team entirely.
Officials ruled that Gatlin took possession of the baton about a stride before the exchange zone, though the American runners disputed the finding and suggested U.S. track and field officials might have grounds for a protest.
"It’s not a DQ," Rodgers told NBC's Lewis Johnson.
Gatlin agreed, saying, "We did the best we could do when we got out there. I felt like it was a clean exchange."
Winner: Fast American Women
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It wasn't the easiest road. But it was the fastest one.
The USA women's 4x100-meter relay team won another gold medal in the second-fastest time in history on Friday night, not long after a qualifying controversy forced them to run a solo race just to post a time that would advance them though the preliminaries.
The win gave Allyson Felix the fifth track and field gold of her Olympic career.
Felix ran the second leg of the relay, taking the baton from Tianna Bartoletta before it moved to No. 3 English Gardner and anchor runner Tori Bowie.
“I had the easiest job of all,” Bowie told NBC’s Lewis Johnson. “My teammates brought me the stick, and all I had to do was bring it to the finish line.”
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Loser: Jordan Burroughs' Self-Esteem
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Jordan Burroughs started the day with two losses in 129 career international wrestling matches.
He ended the day with twice as many losses and no chance to repeat a 2012 gold-medal performance.
The American dropped a 3–2 decision to Aniuar Geduev of Russia in the quarterfinals Friday and then lost 11–1 to Bekzod Abdurakhmonov of Uzbekistan in the losers bracket.
And he didn't take the disappointment well, per Yahoo Sports' Jeff Passan (via SI.com):
"I feel like I let my family down, my kids. I missed a lot of important milestones in my children’s lives to pursue this sport. I didn’t see my son walk for the first time. I’ve left my wife at home with two kids for long periods of time to go to training camps, to foreign countries. She did that joyfully, not begrudgingly, because she knew on days like these I always fulfilled my end. Now I feel like I let her down. I let her down, I let my family down. This is supposed to be my year. This is supposed to be my breakthrough performance that cemented me as a legend in the sport. And it almost retracted my position in the sport. It hurts me. It hurts a lot, man. It hurts.
"
Winner: The Baddest Woman on the Planet
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If there's a woman out there capable of handling Claressa Shields, we haven't heard from her yet.
The returning Olympic gold medalist from 2012 punched her way into a second straight championship bout on Friday with a unanimous four-round decision over Kazakhstan's Dariga Shakimova.
She'll meet Nouchka Fontijn of the Netherlands for the women's middleweight gold on Sunday.
And, ominously for Fontjin, Shields said she has room for improvement.
"I'm in the finals, but that's not enough; we still have one more," she said, per ESPN.com's Dan Rafael. "... A lot of girls are here just to beat me. I'm here to win a gold medal."
Loser: USA Men's Volleyball Killer Instinct
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It wasn't supposed to happen this way.
Three points ahead of Italy and just three points away from a four-set win that'd clinch a berth in the gold-medal match, the last thing on the minds of the USA men's volleyball team was losing.
But the Italians had other ideas.
Six consecutive points forced the match into a winner-take-all fifth set, and the upset arrived soon after as the Americans dropped a 15-9 verdict and were bounced from the tournament, ending their chance for a return to gold-medal status for the first time since 2008 in Beijing.
"It's hard for us to accept this loss because we had so many opportunities in this match," team captain David Lee said, per NBCOlympics.com. "Italy served a lot of aces, and that's why they won. They are a great serving team and can keep themselves in matches just from the service line. They can earn a lot of points in that area, and that can make a lot of difference in a match.
"There were obviously highs and lows in this match. We were on such a high in the third and fourth sets; then we had a little low energy towards the end, and they took advantage of that."
Winner: A Women's Water Polo Dynasty
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Go ahead. Cue the waterworks.
Just two weeks after its head coach, Adam Krikorian, lost his brother to a sudden heart attack, the U.S. women's water polo team won gold to honor his memory and then hung each medal around the grieving leader's neck.
It was enough to move Krikorian through his sadness.
“The 2012 team, I love them to death, and they were a gritty, hard-nosed, tough group,” Krikorian said, per USA Today's Dan Wolken. “But this team has done some special things.”
The Americans beat Italy, 12-5, to clinch the second straight trip to the podium's top step, completing a six-match Rio run in which it outscored opponents 73-32.
“He was telling us to enjoy the moment, enjoy opening ceremonies, don’t worry about me, you be you, this is our dream, live it," team captain Maggie Steffens said. "This is a coach who just went through something so traumatic. We wanted to be strong for him, but he was strong for us, and that’s why he’s the best coach in the world.”
Loser: USA Swimming's Overseas Reputation
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Two weeks ago, Ryan Lochte was among the greatest U.S. swimmers of all time.
That hasn't changed.
But his Olympic takeaway from Rio de Janeiro two weeks later is far from what anyone had anticipated.
The former Florida Gator's reputation took a series of hits on Friday as myriad USA Swimming officials and athletes went public to distance themselves from Lochte's embellished story of a late-night armed robbery.
Lochte's teammate, Gunnar Bentz, released a statement through the University of Georgia (via NBCOlympics.com) that said Lochte vandalized an advertisement behind a convenience store and later initiated a verbal exchange with security guards.
U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun labeled the actions of Lochte and Co. as "not acceptable" and apologized to the people of Brazil, per the Los Angeles Times, for a “distracting ordeal in the midst of what should rightly be a celebration of excellence."
Chuck Wielgus, USA Swimming's executive director, concurred, also suggesting that the silliness was unfairly pulling the spotlight away from competitors who'd earned it.
"The athletes and their remarkable stories should be the focus,” he said, per the Los Angeles Times.
While Michael Phelps rides into the sunset with an unprecedented gold-medal haul, Lochte—the man long considered his second banana—may end his spotlight career with an arrest record.
In fact, the head of Rio's civil police, Fernando Veloso, told the Los Angeles Times there's "very strong evidence" that the American filed a false police report and could face charges.
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