Editor's Note: In the spirit of the From Baltimore to Beijing blog, Rick and Kevin dialogued about their Olympic experiences:
Rick Maese: Until a few years ago, tradition called for the Olympics to close with a grandiose and dramatic pronouncement. The top boss would proclaim for all of the gathered nations and athletes that these particular Games were undoubtedly the best ever.
As these Beijing Games draw to a close today, there's no need to jump into the deep end of the hyperbole pool. Without a doubt, though, these Olympics have produced moments and memories I'll never forget.
Michael Phelps certainly dominated the headlines, and while history will show him as a central figure of these Games, there were plenty of others, those who won medals, those who didn't and those for whom simply being here was more than enough.
Kevin Van Valkenburg: For better or worse, you can't tell the story of these Olympics without mentioning the soupy pollution that draped over the city of Beijing like it was my crazy neighbors' dirty curtains. It dominated the news the first week of the Games, even penetrating the breathable plastic walls of the Water Cube. It was also like something out of George Orwell's 1984. When the U.S. cycling team showed up at the airport wearing masks, the U.S. Olympic Committee freaked, worried China would be insulted. China was claiming the pollution wasn't bad, so even though it felt like we were all breathing brown cotton candy, Team USA had to declare that they had made a mistake and that the air really was quite lovely.
I guess if I had to pick a favorite memory from Week 1, it would be seeing Phelps on the medal stand for the first time after the 400-meter individual medley. He wanted to sing along with the lyrics to the national anthem, but he was so emotional, he couldn't do it. And when Bob Bowman saw him crying, one of the toughest coaches in all of sports started crying, too. Michael isn't typically emotional, but I think in that moment, he knew that despite all the worry over his broken wrist, he was poised to do something special.
RM: Phelps provided countless memorable moments that first week, but all Olympic headlines weren't as positive.
The motto of these Games is plastered all over town, "One World, One Dream," and because we're all living together in this temporary Olympic city - the mayor of which, based on crowd reaction, seems to be Kobe Bryant - there was one story that immediately touched us all. The father-in-law of U.S. men's volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon was fatally stabbed and his mother-in-law seriously injured.
