Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games
Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games, athletic festival held in Rio de Janeiro that took place August 5–21, 2016. The Rio Games were the 28th occurrence of the modern Olympic Games. The event marked the first time that either the Summer or the Winter Olympics were held in South America.
Rio was awarded the Games by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 2009 over bids from Chicago, Madrid, and Tokyo. The buildup to the Rio Games was beset by more problems than any other recent Olympiad. Like many 21st-century Games, particularly the 2014 Sochi Games, the Rio Olympics were plagued by massive cost overruns and construction that ran far behind schedule. Athletes, coaches, and tourists were wary of traveling to the crime-riddled city, where, in addition, an outbreak of the Zika virus led to the withdrawal of a number of prominent athletes, including golfers Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth. The waterways of the city were filled with debris and so polluted that the World Health Organization suggested that athletes using the open waters should avoid swallowing it, cover any exposed cuts with waterproof bandages, and shower as soon as they leave the site. Fewer than 50 days before the Games started, the state of Rio de Janeiro declared a “state of public calamity,” which gave authorities the ability to ration essential public services and made the state eligible for federal emergency funds. Moreover, the Petrobras scandal plunged the Brazilian economy into a recession in the run-up to the Games.
- United States: 121
- China: 70
- United Kingdom: 67
- Russia: 56
- Germany: 42
Note: Medal count per the IOC website.
Despite all of these troubles, the Rio Games started on time and there were few significant problems over the course of the two weeks. The Games featured a new-record 205 participating national Olympic committees, with more than 11,000 athletes competing in 42 sports. Notable new sports that were added for the Rio Games were golf and rugby sevens. The Rio Olympics also featured the debut of a Refugee Team made up of 10 athletes from various war-torn countries who had no permanent new home at the start of the Games.
Like the previous two iterations, the Rio Olympics were highlighted by the achievements of the greatest Olympian of all time, U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps, and the greatest sprinter in Olympic history, Jamaica’s Usain Bolt. After returning from a short-lived retirement, Phelps expanded his Olympic record totals for overall medals (28) and gold medals (23). On the track, Bolt won the 100-meter and 200-meter races for the third consecutive Olympic Games, becoming the first person to accomplish that feat. He also won a gold as a member of Jamaica’s 4 × 100-meter relay team, which temporarily gave him three golds in that event in three straight Olympics—before the January 2017 revelation of a failed drug test by one of his 2008 relay teammates led to the earlier relay medal being stripped. Nevertheless, Bolt’s six total individual sprint Olympic golds still solidified his claim as the fastest man in history.
Phelps was not the only American swimmer to dominate the Rio pool. Katie Ledecky won four gold medals (the 200-, 400-, and 800-meter freestyle and the 4 × 200-meter relay) and one silver (4 ×100-meter freestyle relay). Her performance in the 800-meter final was one of the most impressive in Olympic swimming history, as she took almost two seconds off the previous world-record time and finished more than 11 seconds faster than the silver medalist. Fellow U.S. swimmer Simone Manuel won two golds and two silvers, and her win in the 100-meter freestyle made her the first African American woman to win an individual swimming gold. Americans also led the way in the women’s gymnastics events, as Simone Biles became the first U.S. woman—and just the fifth female ever—to capture four gymnastics golds at a single Games (all-around, floor exercise, vault, and team). Biles’s fourth gold in the team event was also significant in that the American team won with the largest margin of victory (8.209 points) in that competition since the “open-ended” scoring system began 2006.
In other events, the home Brazilian men’s football (soccer) team won the first Olympic gold medal in the football-mad country’s history on a dramatic penalty kick in the final by star forward Neymar. The Fiji rugby sevens team won the first gold medal in that country’s history, fittingly in Fiji’s most popular sport, which led to the declaration of a celebratory public holiday in the country. Two Britons also had historic performances at the Rio Games: distance runner Mo Farah repeated as Olympic champion in the 5,000-meter and 10,000-meter races, becoming the second man (after Lasse Virén) to do so, and cyclist Bradley Wiggins won gold as a member of the men’s pursuit team, giving him eight career Olympic medals, the most in his country’s history.
