august: 2016 lookback

Every time the Olympics rolls around we're already exhausted.
Exhausted by all the news coverage about how much of a disaster the impending games are going to be.
Reports run for months in advance, explaining how unprepared the host city is, how budgets have been blown, stadiums are unfinished and how there's no chance in hell that [insert city name] will ever be able to pull it off.
We got that with Rio. And in spades. But with Rio, the disaster theme continued once the ball was already rolling.
Alongside the actual events were the stories about robberies and how there were curfews in place to minimise danger to athletes and officials.
Obviously, olympians had different views of the olympics. Usain Bolt looked at it like a place of unfinished business. Michael Phelps looked at it as a gold mine.
Douche bag Ryan Lochte used it as an excuse to show the world what white privilege means.
But the real star of the 2016 Olympics wasn't part of the American team.
It was Tonga.
Tonga had some cute uniforms. And I liked their riff on the Swiss flag. But really, I wasn't looking at either of those things when the opening ceremony played out. Even as a pacifist, the Olympics were suddenly about Taekwondo for me. In particular, Pita Taufatofua. His oiled up appearance broke the internet.
Pita stole the show. Right from the opening ceremony. The medal count and events didn't matter from that moment on.
The Aussie born/based athlete grew up in Tonga. Taufatofua didn't make it past the first round of his bout but his appearance at the opening ceremony declared what we knew to be true. The 2016 Olympics belonged to Tonga.
As if we needed more proof, when The Daily Beast posted an inflammatory article trying to out gay athletes at Rio, jeopardising the safety of some of them [after all, being gay can be a dangerous thing in some countries] Amina Fonua, another Tongan olympian [from the 2012 games] came out scathing and stole what was left of the show.
Tonga, that tiny, little place in the Pacific that people have only heard about was suddenly everything. A place whose inhabitants are capable of breaking the internet and setting hearts a flutter without doing much more than stripping off a few layers of clothing.
And that kids, is what the OIympic spirit is all about.

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