The disconnect in the closing ceremonies for me was Johnny Weir, a man who wears the most outrageous outfits yet delivers the most banal comments. I'd prefer if it were the reverse.
New Jersey - where I lived for the first 18 years of my life - and Florida - where I've lived for the last 32 - are having a pretty good Olympics.
Just as the athletes miss hearing the fans, I miss hearing the Russian national anthem.
Tennis had some nice moments in Tokyo, but they were perhaps overshadowed by the greatest player in the world, Novak Djokovic, flaming out with a tantrum – tossing one racket into the stands, smashing another against the net post – followed by a default in mixed doubles (guaranteeing he would go home without a medal), and the singles gold medal going to a man, Alexander Zverev, who for the last year has played under the cloud of domestic abuse accusations.
This week, per usual, I’ve been watching sports I see only during the Olympics: fencing, badminton, table tennis, water polo.
Then I go to the gym, where an extremely fit woman visiting from Colombia has been putting herself through a rigorous routine: weights, treadmill, jump-rope, repeat. The other day I asked her if she was an athlete back home.
“Yes,” she said. “I play water polo.”
It was a bit like learning a new word and then almost immediately coming across it in a sentence.
Of the four channels I get that are showing the Olympics, my favorite is the Olympic Channel. It is the only one showing the tennis, but I also enjoy its news segments, which often feature interviews with medal winners who are not American. Some have translators, but many speak in English, sometimes through tears over not finishing first. There’s an emotional honesty to the exchanges that is often as riveting as the competitions.