"Rio deserved a more balanced, less hysterical prologue, just as it deserves a more balanced, less triumphal epilogue."

Two respected journalists and Olympic Games veterans tied up the loose ends of Rio and suggest that the pre-Olympics coverage was badly overblown given Rio's winter time weather (and therefore, no mosquitos).

Alan Abrahamson was the longtime Olympics beat reporter for the LA Times and now has his own site, 3 Wire Sports, devoted to Olympics coverage.

He writes:

The developed world’s assessment and pre-Games judgment of developing Brazil smacked, in many instances, of smug privilege if not the very worst strands of colonialism and imperialism. Why expect Rio to be London or Vancouver?

Social media amplified the predictions of catastrophe. A threat on Reddit was dedicated to the “Apocalympics.”

Consider the Zika thing — which, among other consequences, purportedly led to the withdrawal of many top male golfers from golf’s debut at the Olympics.

The World Health Organization said last Thursday that no one appears to have caught Zika at the Games. That means, according to WHO, “spectators, athletes or anyone associated with the Olympics.”

To be even more direct — not one worker at the Rio golf grounds.

Yet the world’s top guy pros wouldn’t or couldn’t go?

Turns out, you had a better chance of dying from running into a swarm of angry capybaras who had just tasted the press room coffee.

(The on-course lack of a Zika issue was pointed out here first (June 29, 2016) that no members of the crew had been infected, yet, the world's top golfers who stayed away didn't get a link sent their way.)

Christopher Clarey of the New York Times, who has covered the Olympics since 1992, admits to falling for the pre-Games coverage and laments it.

Exhibit A was the four cans of mosquito repellent, bought in the United States, that were sitting unused on a table in my hotel room, a still life to fear.

This is not to imply that the Zika virus has not been a major issue in Rio or that water pollution in Guanabara Bay does not remain one. But it is to make clear that a lot of us in my business got it wrong when it came to the impact those issues would have on the Olympics themselves.

“All we do is read what’s in the headlines, and the headlines always scare you,” said Bubba Watson, one of the leading golfers who did elect to play in the Games when many opted out.

Rio deserved a more balanced, less hysterical prologue, just as it deserves a more balanced, less triumphal epilogue.