Ford: Two shows in Rio, but you saw only one

Separating what is real and what is manufactured at the Olympic Games has always presented a degree of difficulty that ranks with any triple-flipping, double-twisting entry into a murky, green diving well.

That has never been more true than during the Rio Olympics that end Sunday with a final burst of events and a closing ceremony that surrounds the extinguishing of the Olympic flame. Since the entire lead-up to the Games, their slapdash administration, a seemingly worldwide doping epidemic, myriad dangers in Brazil itself, and the usual charges of corruption and IOC scandal didn't put out the torch previously, it will reportedly be left to Pele to boot the Rio experience past the near post of history.

There were wonderful moments and fantastic performances in Rio, without question, particularly from the point of view of the United States and NBC. The U.S. team won the medal count, as expected, and did so with hefty hauls in swimming, gymnastics, and track and field. Swimmers Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky went to Rio as stars and didn't disappoint. Nearly overnight, gymnast Simone Biles, who would win four golds and a bronze, became prime programming and America's newfound star, which is a good trick for someone who was already a three-time all-around world champion in her sport.

That's how the Olympics works, though. Every four years viewers tune in to sports they wouldn't watch on a dare during the other three years and 50 weeks of the quadrennial. They tune in for the flag-dripping coverage and emotional malarkey that NBC employs to turn the events into a combination of pep rally and county fair.

The television version of reality is very pleasant, but its gauzy lens and magnificent panoramas rarely sharpened and tightened in Rio to reveal the debris floating in the bays or the seats left empty at the venues by disenfranchised Brazilians, foreigners who were scared off, or perhaps just thousands of ticket holders stuck in the city's perpetual gridlock.

The two faces of the Olympics were reflected in many mirrors this time. There was the presumption of a competition that was as clean as possible at the same time that the entire Russian track and field team was barred for a long history of systematic doping. Almost certainly, there will be positive drug tests resulting from these Games, if not now then somewhere down the road when the testers catch up to what was going on. Since 2000, nearly 60 Olympic medalists have been stripped of their prizes, sometimes as much as eight years after the competition. That number might soon include the Kenyan 800-meter runner for whom a team official tried to stand-in and provide a urine sample after his event. At what point testers determined the two men didn't resemble each other is best left where it is.

The face of international sportsmanship, a coming-together of distant friends, was also on display for the cameras, as when two 5,000-meter runners tangled and fell, and one stopped to help the other finish the race. Those moments are genuine, but so are the moments like the one in which the Egyptian judo competitor refused to shake hands with his Israeli opponent after their match. Or the one in which whining U.S. soccer goalie Hope Solo called the Swedish team "cowards" following a quarterfinal loss in which the Swedes played tactical defense after taking a lead.

But doping and the flimsy altar of Olympic sporting ideals are present for every set of Games. What made Brazil particularly dicey was the backdrop of pollution, political upheaval, corrupt mismanagement, and crime. People predicted that Rio would simply not function and that some events would have to be canceled; that the shaky infrastructure could not carry the weight of the two-week monster for that long. That turned out to be wrong. Somehow, it all happened, it looked good on television, and that was the reality most of us are left with.

Along the way, other things happened, too. It's always an odd Olympics when one of the torchbearers carrying the flame on its run to the cauldron drops his pants to reveal a jaguar-print thong on which a political slogan had been painted. That doesn't happen every time. And when the Australian team returned to its Olympic Village rooms after a fire alarm, only to find they had been robbed, that wasn't normal, either. Same goes for the water in the diving well turning green with algae for four days because the machinery ran out of chlorine. A bit out of the ordinary.

There were assorted embarrassments for the locals, some regarding the fetid open waters and the occasional mugging on iconic Copacabana Beach, which always looked so safe with Bob Costas sitting in front of it. Anything seemed possible and that led to inaccurate reports, like the one about the kayaker who capsized after hitting a sofa on a practice run. That didn't happen, and in the most notorious incident, it turned out that Ryan Lochte and three other U.S. swimmers were vandals rather than victims in a drunken altercation at a gas station. The Brazilian cops weren't amused by the initial false report, but diplomacy held sway, and that episode will eventually float away along with many others on the embers from the dying torch.

The world goes wheels-up on Rio come Monday morning and, for the most part, that will be the last we think of it. The people will be left behind with their brand new velodrome, natatorium, and golf course and the $10 billion in debt that came along the Games. The Olympics will recover from Rio, but the other way around might never happen.

In four years, we'll all recover enough to pay attention to swimming and gymnastics again. If the Olympics were on television every week, they would get ratings equivalent to fishing shows and wok infomercials. That's another reality, and no one knows it better than the networks that artfully herald this rare meeting of nations with a blare of trumpets, a raising of the flag, and a soft focus on accompanying hard realities.

It's a show, and it's been a heck of show this time, too. In fact, there were two shows in Rio. You just didn't get to see the other one much.

bford@phillynews.com

@bobfordsports