I ended up actually being at the closing ceremony, although the evening didn't exactly go to plan. Together with a few colleagues I'd been asked to gather flash quotes from flagbearers, but on a night of high wind and rain and with everyone pretty much at the limits of their endurance it turned out to be impossible to actually find any athletes before the ceremony kicked off. We walked the entire circuit of the stadium in vain, asked everyone we met, tried cajoling our way through various access points, and to no avail - so in the end we gave up and watched the ceremony instead.
It was a good closing ceremony, full of music and colour and very Brazilian while sticking to the low-budget effects of the opening ceremony. Actually I think this is a good model for the future. Beijing's ceremonies were filled with hordes of people in perfect synchronicity. London's had cool sets. Rio's were mainly digital, but it worked just as well. And the finale last night, in which dancing vegetation turned into a massive samba in the middle of the stadium - with the athletes joining in right at the end - seemed a fitting finale to the Olympic Games.
It's been a memorable, exhausting two weeks which have flown by. In the end I covered seven sports, all apart from rowing and canoe sprints briefly, with a session or two at athletics, hockey, sailing, swimming and wrestling providing variety and breaks from the wind and heat at Lagoa. I witnessed 14 nailbiting rowing finals and 12 canoe sprint finals; three gold and six bronze medal wrestling bouts; and covered the mixed zone for two brilliant sailing podiums. I heard the British national anthem played five times in total (three rowing golds, one canoe sprint and one sailing), but the German anthem was the one I heard most live (two rowing golds and four at canoe sprints).
Before they started racing or before finals I managed to interview five eventual gold medallists - Mahe Drysdale, Hamish Bond and Eric Murray, German canoe sprinter Sebastian Brendel and, briefly in the mixed zone, Canadian swimming star Penny Oleksiak - as well as several former champions and legends of their sports.
My fabulous flash quote reporters and I had a solid run in getting quotes in the 'quotes of the day' section on the journalists' information hub as well as two in quotes of the Games, including my favourite from Eric Murray. When asked (by a Kiwi journalist, I confess, I only picked it up) why he and Hamish Bond are so much faster than all their rivals, Murray said: "I think we're just better-looking." The BBC tweeted it and it went moderately viral.
But as well as the champions I met so many other incredible athletes. Only a small number of Olympians win gold medals or even make it to the final, but everyone competing in Rio has given up a huge amount and put in so much hard work to be at the Olympics. They can all say for the rest of their lives they are Olympians, members of a very small group.
Our own small group of Olympic News Service staff are starting to head off back to their normal lives. Some of us are staying for the Paralympics and we now have a week or so off to get some rest and be tourists; the others are flying back to the real world outside the Olympic bubble. We'll hopefully all meet again at another event. The job's not always easy and it's seldom glamorous but it is most definitely rewarding. I'd never have had the physical attributes to be an Olympic athlete. But I'm glad my journalism skills have helped me be an ONS reporter.
I've now moved out to Barra di Tijuca, into one of the media 'villages' where most of my ONS colleagues have been staying - it's quite a long way from anywhere but I have a whole apartment to myself with a double bed and a sofa and am looking forward to predominantly vegging, with a few excursions, for the next week before we're into Paralympic mode. It's been a blast and there's still more to come!
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