stadium. He was the last man in the field, and exhaustion was etched into his face. It is a tradition to cheer the stragglers, and the Aussies, with their great sense of sportsmanship and love of the underdog, had already given a fine ovation to Cambodian runner Rithya To, the next-to-last runner, who managed to stagger over the line before falling face-first to the track. And when Rodriguez began his final circuit, they clapped for him too.

But as he made his way around the track, something changed. The applause began to grow and swell, the sound cascading around the stadium as the lone figure trudged on. And then everyone was on their feet, cheering and clapping as Rodriguez went slowly by far below. It may not have beenthe loudest, but it was the deepest applause that I heard in the entire Games. We were saluting this one athlete, his effort, but we were saluting something more. We were saluting every athlete at the Games, the ones who won and the ones who lost, the great and the small, the famous and the obscure. And we were paying tribute to the best parts of ourselves, the elements that we had seen so nobly exemplified during these Games, the things that will endure when the world has long forgotten who won or lost a race: courage, tenacity and indomitable spirit.

And as the applause rang out, the sound falling like a waterfall or a hand on the shoulder, an odd refrain, a thought I’ve never had before, came