2012 Olympic Watch-See You In Rio

After 17 days of exhilarating competition filled with highs, lows, drama, controversy and upsets, the 2012 Summer Olympics in London came to a close last night as the torch was extinguished and the Antwerp Olympic flag was passed on to the mayor of Rio de Janeiro.

There were probably some eye rolls occurring all over Chicago when that part of the closing ceremony happened. 

Team USA won 104 total medals, 46 of them gold in what I'm calling the 'Title IX Olympics'.   27 of the 46 golds earned by the United States were courtesy of female athletes on a 2012 USA Olympic team that had for the first time more female than male athletes.   Our female team athletes did quite well in winning a fifth consecutive gold in basketball, the first ever in water polo, and repeating in soccer (stop hatin' Renee).

There was an upset in the volleyball final as our number one ranked women had to settle for silver and the field hockey team didn't get out of pool play.  

This was also the first Olympic Games ever in which all the competing nations entered had at least one female athlete as part of their delegations.

We Olympic junkies will now have to wait until August 5, 2016 for the opening ceremonies of the 31st Olympiad of the modern era.   And thank God for American viewers Rio is only one hour ahead of the eastern time zone and NBC won't have any excuse to not broadcast more events live.

We hope.

Goodbye, London.  You did a wonderful job hosting the Games for the third time.  The torch has been passed to you now Rio.  Looking forward to seeing how y'all handle it in 2016