PYEONGCHANG,
South Korea

One of the best parts of every Closing Ceremony is the way that Olympians march in en masse, a group of competitors no longer separated by national origin. It’s an easy visual metaphor, yes, but it’s a good one too, an opportunity to see the Olympics as their own self-imagined ideal: competition that leads to a deeper connection.

The PyeongChang Olympics closed on Sunday night with a ceremony that was a bit of a Vegas buffet, something for everyone, but the emotional highlight was, without a doubt, that athlete march. Nearly 3,000 of them walked onto the circular floor of PyeongChang Stadium, some waving flags, some with their arms around each other, some riding on others’ shoulders, and some sporting the medals they’d won these last two weeks. They posed for selfies as frustrated production assistants just offstage tried to hustle them into their seats, but this was the athletes’ last moment on the world stage—they weren’t surrendering it for anyone. In the highly regimented, time-is-of-the-essence world that is the Olympics, it was a rare moment of imprecise, glorious humanity.

There was a bit of the half-full school play about all of these Games; attendance was sparse at virtually all events that didn’t feature South Koreans in marquee roles. While there were bright, peppy Olympic signs running all the way from Gangneung on the coast to Phoenix Park in the mountains, a distance of 60 miles—almost all seemed temporary, almost all seemed like they’d be a painful, cringe-worthy reminder of what had been if you happened to run across them two or five or ten years down the road. Behind those signs, the mountains were brown and the trees sparse, and you have to wonder how much will have changed for the better a decade from now because of these Games.

The Olympic volunteers were uniformly cheerful— beyond cheerful, they were exuberant, every last smiling one of them—everywhere from the always-on-time shuttle buses to the innumerable security stops to the late-night bowling alley a few of your humble correspondents frequented to a Gangneung roast chicken joint we visited with religious devotion. But will that exuberance, and the goodwill it inspired, be enough to transform PyeongChang into the tourist destination it hopes to become after these games? The Gangwon Province government is gambling the region’s future on it.

For America, these Olympics represented a chance to reassess, a time to consider where we’ve fallen short—athletically speaking—and where our future looks bright. Snowboarding, of all sports, appears to be the leading edge for America going forward, with bright lights like Chloe Kim and Red Gerard—neither of whom were even born in the 1990s—leading the way for the United States into 2022 and beyond.

There were more, so many more: — Jessie Diggins and Kikkan Randall might just have given us the victory of the Games, taking the cross-country relay event by a mere 0.19 seconds. — The tale of “Team Reject”— the four curlers who didn’t quit their day jobs but won a gold medal anyway—was one of the best of the Games. — The women’s hockey team had been pounding at the door of triumph for years, and finally kicked it wide open with one beautiful overtime flick off the stick of Jocelyne Lamoreux- Davidson. — Mikaela Shiffrin cemented her place as one of the best athletes in America right now— don’t buy into that five-gold medals nonsense from before the Games; Shiffrin’s gold and silver are a sterling achievement— and Lindsey Vonn skied what’s likely to be her last Olympics with grace…and not a little regret. — Shaun White further embellished his status as one of America’s premier Olympians, though his difficult history.