Es had pent up and pent up and pent up. Now the pressure was too great in the Barra vortex. But someone had to say it. Okay, tweet. Cody Miller then did it. “It’s like Rocky IV,” wrote Miller, breaststroke, American, at the height, when adrenaline and mistrust finally made their way, out of the heads, the bodies, the pelvis, over the tiers, into the catacombs, into the cameras and into the network. Swimmers who felt like they were in a movie. On a wave of adrenaline.
Rio de Janeiro, August 3rd. The games haven’t started yet. Michael Phelps, the most successful athlete Olympia has seen in 120 years, the man who will have won 23 gold medals at the end of these games, more than Austria since 1896, more than all the people of the Indian subcontinent put together, gives a press conference in a chilled room . Phelps is the flag bearer at the opening, it’s about honor and flag. He became a father in the spring. That made him an adult, says Phelps. Everything cool. It’s nearing the end of the round. An American journalist wants to know what Phelps has to say on the subject that determines these games like no other: Russian state doping, the extent of which was only published weeks before in the first part of the so-called “McLaren Report” of the world anti- Doping Agency Wada had been documented. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) under its President Thomas Bach had delegated the decision whether Russian athletes were allowed to start to the professional associations and otherwise prevented the start of the whistleblower Julija Stepanova. 282 Russian athletes would start in Rio. There was something in the air.
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