The Games of the XXV Olympiad came to a successful close last night. All's well that ends with Placido Domingo singing the Olympic anthem and nobody declaring war or massive lawsuits on each other.
The Barcelona Olympics ended in much the same manner as they began, with thousands of people inside the Olympic Stadium high above the city on Mount Monjuic, and thousands more outside the stadium, seemingly indifferent that they couldn't get inside.As much as anything, Barcelona will be remembered for these crowds, made up mostly of local residents, that hovered around the stadiums. They came, they didn't see, they ate ice cream and ham sandwiches, and they went home happy anyway - either that or they went down to Los Ramblas until four in the morning, seeing if they could get a glimpse of Charles Barkley, who didn't charge admission. Holding the Olympics in a city of almost 2 million people wedged as close as possible to the Mediterranean Sea did not lack for attention.
They were the largest Olympics in history, comprising a record 172 nations and nearly 20,000 athletes. Even at that, the United States stood out, winning the most medals of any American team in a non-boycotted Olympics since the 1904 Games in St. Louis (when only 10 nations showed up for the third-ever modern Olympiad and the host nation used its home-arch advantage to its fullest).
Most memorable was the U.S. basketball team, no doubt the finest collection of basketball talent ever assembled.
Curiously, however, besides the Dream Team's gold medal runaway, the United States had the bulk of its disappointments in team sports.
Expected medal contenders in soccer, baseball and water polo were shut out completely and both the women's and men's volleyball teams wound up with bronze medals instead of the golds they anticipated. The gymnastics teams got just one medal, a bronze by the women, and that was also less than expected.
It was in the individual sports of track and field (30 medals) and swimming (27 medals) that the United States fared the best and ruled a large part of the sporting world. Carl Lewis lived to dominate another Games after all.
What it all meant, no one was saying publicly, although there were a lot of individual opinions.
Utah's connection to the Barcelona Olympics was wide, varied and successful. Karl Malone and John Stockton of the Dream Team represented the Utah Jazz in gold-medal style. And four other athletes with Utah collegiate ties from foreign nations won medals - Frank Fredericks of Namibia and BYU won silver medals in both the 100- and 200-meter runs, Oluyemi Kayode of Nigeria and BYU won a silver medal in the men's 4X100 relay, Christy Opara Thompson of Nigeria and BYU won a bronze medal in the women's 4X100 relay, and Xiahong Wang of China and the University of Utah won a silver medal in the women's 200-meter butterfly race.
Utah natives Ed Eyestone, Denise Parker and Julie Jenkins finished among the elite in their sports, albeit out of the medals. Eyestone was 13th in the marathon, Parker finished among the top eight in women's archery and Jenkins finished among the top 16 in the women's 800-meter run.
Eyestone's race in the marathon wound up the competition on Sunday. Once a Mormon missionary in Barcelona, he knew the climate well and devised a plot to start out slowly, take advantage of the heat and humidity, and reel in the frontrunners during the 26.2-mile race's latter stages (see adjoining story). He was foiled by cooler weather and, in part, by the crowds that lined the course from start to finish.
The spectators were so thick when the race got into Barcelona's narrow streets for the final 10 miles that Eyestone lost sight of the leaders as they made a surge he was unable to counter.
"I just couldn't see far enough ahead to know what was going on," he said.
Still, he appreciated the interest. So did the vast majority of the Olympians who came to Barcelona. They'd never seen anything like it. And vice versa.