And so the Olympics are finished, and this will be the last summer event with a good timezone, for us europeans, for the next 8 years
This 2 weeks were, as almost always, amazing; the french really took advantage of all its iconic locations for every event and the return of the public was really needed
But it was not all perfect: the sometimes bad organization, the Seine fiasco, the really bad refeering and all the discussions about genders......it really gave me an headache
Regarding Italy: at the beginning we thought it could be very difficult to do better than Tokyo, considering that all the victories in the athletics except Tamberi would be impossible to replicate (and even Tamberi ended up with no medals
); but in the end we italians did italian things ended up with the same general amounts of Tokyo, but with a better gold medals tally
The women took control of that tally (7 against men's 3 and mixed's 2) so good on you, ladies
The most iconic italian gold of this edition is clearly today's gold in the women's volleyball; we had a Benfica like curse regarding this, since the allmighty men's squad of the 90's lost incredibly to the Netherlands at Atlanta, so I'm so happy that we have finally defeated it
The absence of Russia clearly has shaken the entire landscape of this Olympics: France, of course, did great and broke records, but Australia did even better
and so Japan, Korea and, yes, Uzbekistan (8 golds
); Jamaica was the biggest dissapointment, just one gold and it was incredibly on the field, not on the track
I conclude this statemnet with a shout-out, of course, to every nation that got finally a taste of olympic medal for the 1st time (straight up gold like Saint Lucia and Dominica or a just a bronze like the refugees or Albania)
And now unto the next one, as us italians will welcome you in Milan and Cortina in two years time for a rollercoaster of winter's emotions
But the real question is: Can we do worse than Paris in the organization's part ? I hope not