2012 Summer Olympics: From The Opening To Closing Ceremonies (And Everything In Between)

On Tuesday, we looked at the first week of the 2012 Summer Olympics with Part I of the best photos from the London Games, so naturally on Wednesday, we have Part 3. I’m kidding! It’s Part 2.

The pictures that follow are some of the best from the second week of the Olmypics, again with an overall focus on American athletes and gold medal matches, but I also tried to capture some of the greatest moments we witnessed in London.

“The 2012 Summer Olympics are over, but the memories will last a lifetime!”

That’s probably something NBC has said by now, perhaps while trying to sell you a commemorative dish, or a collection of pins (I’ll never understand the Olympic pin obsession). But in reality, you’ll probably soon forget most of what you saw in London, if you haven’t already (quick -- who won the decathlon? Right.). Your sports mind needs to start making room for the final weeks of the baseball season, NFL training camps getting started and, I dunno, non-stop Tim Tebow news, apparently. So gone is the name Ashton Eaton.

Another Olympic tradition unfolds even after the games themselves have ended: the “disappearance” of athletes from less-than-desirable global zip codes into the streets of the Games’ host country.

This time the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon are the parties reporting missing athletes, with Cameroon missing five boxers, and the DRC missing an athlete and three coaches. Finding nine people in London should be simple as long as you get Jason Statham to beat information out of men in hats with Cockney accents. (This already sounds like a Guy Ritchie movie, so why not just make the logical conclusion as to how this ends.)

The Cauldron has been extinguished, the final medal count has been tallied, and jokes have been made at the Closing Ceremony’s expense (many, many jokes) -- the 2012 Summer Olympics are officially a thing of the past. Meaning it’s time we look ahead at what’s next.

Sunday night, London ceremonially passed the Games to the city of Rio de Janeiro, the hosts of the 2016 Summer Olympics. Brazil will be the first-ever South American host, and at just one hour ahead of the Eastern time zone, (hopefully) a tape-delay free Games. But before we get to see how Rio sambas its way into the nightmares of NBC’s standards and practices division, the Olympics will visit the Russian winter.

For the past two weeks, you watched sports you have never seen before -- and likely never had heard of before -- simply because it was the Olympics. Millions of people, several of whom had no national pride to speak of past enjoying July 4th and fireworks, had a two-week fit of patriotism during which they acted like 1980s Hulk Hogan.

We cheered for athletes whose names we will forget as quickly as learned them, all in the hopes that the United States would end up on top of the medal table. Well, mission accomplished.

From the end of Sunday night’s Closing Ceremony:

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The 2012 London Olympics ended quite spectacularly on Sunday, with the United States wrapping up a gold medal in men’s basketball shortly before the closing ceremonies commenced. The gold medals Team USA earned Sunday were a very small portion of their final count, however, as the Sweet Land of Liberty finished atop the Olympic leaderboard with 46 gold medals.

The United States final medal count included 46 gold medals to go with 29 silver and bronze medals apiece, totaling a terrific 104 total medals over the past few weeks in London. That total bested America’s closest competitor, China, who finished in second place with 38 gold medals en route to 87 total.

The United States dominated the medal count with more golds and overall medals than any other country. Leading the way? A strong female delegation that blew away the world across the board.

Team USA’s women won 58 overall medals -- more than any country’s combined male and female tally except for China, Great Britain and Russia. A whopping half of those medals were golds, which accounted for 29 of the United States’ total of 46, and would have been tied with Great Britain for third in the combined gold medal count. Their 58 medals were nine more than the 49 won by Chinese female athletes.

Before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the US had finished at the top of the gold medal count in four consecutive Olympics.

China snapped that streak in 2008, finishing with 51 gold medals to only 36 for the US. Without the benefit of home-field advantage, things returned to “normal” in London, with the US at 46 golds to China’s 38.

It was easy to get distracted and confused by all the shiny lights and music of Sunday’s Closing Ceremony. If that’s the case, here’s a bunch of things people said about the ceremony, revealing that most people who watched it also found themselves distracted and confused by all of the stuff going on. All that said, everybody seemed to enjoy the random mixture of various British cultural references.

From the LA Times:

For nearly two weeks at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, it was a dogfight at the top of the medal count leaderboard between the United States and China.

Over the last weekend of events, the United States pulled away. They gained such a lead, in fact, that entering the final day of events on Sunday, they had already ensured they would leave as the winners in total medals and gold medals. Still, the U.S. managed to add two final gold medals to their tally on Sunday, in wrestling and in men’s basketball, to make it 46 gold medals in total.

Long before the 2012 Olympic Games started, we here at SB Nation were singing the praises of horses. We may have considered the equestrian Olympic events silly, but it was always in good fun. Even though the horse-based events may be mostly for Rich Fellers, we’ve always known that horses own these Olympics. Saturday and Sunday’s modern pentathlon events have already given us a couple of unforgettable moments. As you’ll see after the jump, Olympic horses truly are the gift that keeps on giving.

The horse-based portion (hortion) of the women’s modern pentathlon final is in the books on Sunday. It featured a couple of truly amazing moments.

At 37 years old, Meb Keflezighi was the oldest member of Team USA in Sunday’s Olympic marathon. And after Ryan Hall and Abdi Abdirahman were forced to withdraw with injury, he was the only member of Team USA in Sunday’s Olympic marathon. Meb finished fourth, running a 2:11:06, which, somewhat amazingly, is 23 seconds faster than his silver-medal-winning time from Athens.

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It had to happen sooner or later: McKayla Maroney has summoned the ouroboros by appearing impressed with McKayla Is Not Impressed.

That’s the latest Instagrammed pic from Maroney -- the real one. And it is fantastic, because it proves that teenagers who become the focal points of Internet memes for being dissatisfied for doing less than their best, which is also the best in the world, can, in fact, re-hijack their own narrative by acknowledging it with a wink.

Mo Farah has won the gold medal in the men’s 5000 meters, becoming the first to do so on home soil, giving Great Britain its marquee moment from the Olympic track at the London Games. Farah, a week after winning the 10,000m, crossed the finish line Saturday night in 13:41.66, becoming just the seventh athlete ever to accomplish the rare double. He’s also the first British runner to win gold in either of the distance events.

Ethiopia’s Dejen Gebremeskel won silver, just 0.32 seconds behind Farah, and Kenya’s Thomas Longosiwa took bronze.

NBC received heavy criticism for its decision to tape-delay the 2012 Olympics’ Opening Ceremony two weeks ago and not provide a live online stream to viewers. The network is doing an about-face on the Closing Ceremony, which it announced Saturday that it would stream online.

Sports Business Journal’s John Ourand has the full statement from NBC:

The Closing Ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in London will take place on Sunday night and feature a slew of famous British musical acts. The artistic director of the Ceremony is referring to the event as a “mashed-up symphony” of Britpop, which will probably be as bad as that sounds.

According to the Associated Press, The Who and the reunited Spice Girls will be among the superstar performers at the event. Hopefully at the same time. Sporty Spice could do a back handspring over Pete Townshend while he smashes a guitar. Then Roger Daltry and Scary Spice could make out during the breakdown in a rock remix of “2 Become 1.” But never mind my fanfic dream diary right now.

Team USA chose track and field’s Bryshon Nellum to represent the delegation as the flag bearer in the 2012 London Olympics Closing Ceremony. Nellum earned a silver medal at the games, running the first leg of the men’s 4x400 meter relay. He also competed in the individual men’s 400m, reaching the semifinals before bowing out with a third-place finish.

But Nellum’s incredible backstory is certainly a reason why he was proudly picked to represent Team USA’s 529-member delegation. As a freshman at USC, a car pulled up alongside Nellum while he was walking home from a party and shot him in the legs. Nellum was wounded in each thigh and his right hamstring, which required three surgeries to recover. The last operation was performed less than a year ago.

On Thursday and Friday, the women’s and men’s 10km marathon swim events were held. Athletes swam laps in the Serpentine in Hyde Park, for 6.2 miles. Almost two hours of physical activity is exhausting and depleting, and they can’t exactly hop out of the water for some Gatorade, so how do they get their in-race nutrition? With the help of a long pole, and acting like an otter.

First, they find their country’s flag, which designates their water bottle and are positioned on the end of a long pole being held by their coach ...

Welcome, everyone, to our second Olympics installment of THIS WEEK IN GIFs. I’m really gonna miss this Olympiad when it’s gone, and I can think of no better justification than the following eight animated GIFs.

Before we get going, here’s a breakdown of this week’s GIF lineup from myself and my fellow GIF enthusiasts, Matt Ufford and Dan Rubenstein. Weightlifters: if the video hurts your feelings, I am sorry and please do not beat me up:

The title of “World’s Greatest Athlete” now belongs to Ashton Eaton of the United States.

Just a bit more than six weeks after breaking the world record in the event, Eaton won gold in men’s decathlon on Thursday at the 2012 Summer Olympics, finishing with 8,869 points. Fellow Team USA member and two-time defending world champion Trey Hardee won the silver (and the title of “World’s Second-Greatest Athlete?”) with 8,671 points. It marks the first time Americans went 1-2 in the Olympic decathlon since Milton Campbell and Rafer Johnson accomplished the feat in 1956. (The last time any two countrymen took the top two spots in the event was 1988, when Germans Christian Schenk and Torsten Voss took gold and silver, respectively.)

Usain Bolt defended his gold medal in the men’s 200 meters at the 2012 Summer Olympics on Thursday night, winning in a time of 19.32 seconds. He becomes not only the first man ever to win 200m gold at back-to-back Summer Games -- Germany’s Bärbel Eckert-Wöckel (1976, 1980) and Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell-Brown (2004, 2008) have accomplished the feat in the women’s 200m -- but also the first man to win both the 100m and 200m in consecutive Olympics, firmly cementing his legacy as one of the greatest sprinters the world has ever seen.

Yohan Blake -- who beat Bolt in the 200m at Jamaica’s Olympic team trials -- won the silver medal, finishing in 19.44 seconds, the second-fastest time he’s ever run and the fastest silver-medal time in history. Warren Weir was third, making it a podium sweep for Jamaica. It’s the first time any country other than the United States has swept the 200m.

The American men were a big disappointment in boxing at the London Games, but Claressa Shields helped to make up for that on Thursday when she won the US’ first ever gold medal in women’s middleweight (165 lbs), beating Russia’s Nadezda Torlopova, 19-12. It’s also first-ever women’s boxing medal won by the United States, in any weight class (the sport is making its Olympic debut in 2012).

The 17-year old Shields drew even with Torlopova in the first round, but then won each of the next three rounds on her way to gold. Shields looked good in all her matches at the Olympics, with her closest bout being her quarterfinal 18-14 win over Anna Laurell.

Obviously, there are many events at the Summer Olympics, from swimming to track and field to ... trampoline and equestrian. It’s hard to catch them all, but luckily, I’ve been able to, for the most part. I’ve stayed awake or woken up at 4 a.m. ET occasionally to see what NBC Sports Network is airing to start their day. It’s not always pretty, but sometimes it can be a lot of fun.

Lots of sports means lots of broadcasters, some good, some not so good. So I decided to rank these announcing teams -- many of them thrown together just for this tournament -- in a BCS-like format. These are all the teams that NBC has sent to London for the Games (if they’re not on this list, they’re calling it off a monitor in New York). They’ve been ranked based on ability to give information, enthusiasm without seeming schticky and their ability to not call something a 16-year old gymnast did “a disaster” (SPOILER ALERT). Enjoy.