The Thrill of Victory Meets the Agony of Defeat at the Paris Games

Over the course of three Olympic Games, they were the ruthless heartbreakers. In Paris last week, they were the heartbroken.

The U.S. women’s water polo team lost their last two games in cruel fashion — Australia edging them by a goal in a penalty throw shootout, and the Netherlands scoring a game-winner with less than a second to play — stopping their streak of earning medals in six consecutive Olympics, including a remarkable strand of three golds.

“I’m super grateful to represent this country,” said Ryann Neushul, the third sister from Santa Barbara to play for the U.S. team. “This Olympics reminded us that you don’t just walk out there wearing ‘U.S.A.’ and win. A lot of things have to go right. It’s difficult to win all the time.”

The water polo competition was amazingly tight. Both semifinal games were decided by tiebreakers, and a goal either way would have put the Americans and Dutch in the gold-medal match instead of Australia and Spain, the eventual champion.

“By far, they were the most competitive games in women’s water polo,” Neushul said. “Hungary was another good team. I was proud of the way I competed [she scored two goals in the bronze medal game] but at the end of the day it was a team loss. That’s the tough thing about team sports.” She added, “We all had heart.”

The tough thing about the Olympics Games is that they happen only every four years. It’s also a beautiful thing, the enormousness of a gathering of 10,500 athletes, transcending all the other tournaments Neushul has played in. “In the Olympic Village, it was inspiring to see athletes from so many other countries and a refugee team,” she said.

She also took inspiration from the 15,000 fans watching games in the Paris la Defense Arena where the final rounds were played — something her sister Jamie missed at the COVID-emptied venues of Tokyo. Ryann said, “Looking up at the flags and people wearing our caps brought tears to my eyes.”

Their most flamboyant fan was Flavor Flav, a 65-year-old rapper who signed a five-year sponsorship deal with the U.S. water polo teams. He posted this message on X after the women’s final game: “I love my girls,,, [sic] and imma so proud of them. We introduced water polo to a new audience and we just getting started,,, [sic] We headed to LA28.”

The U.S. men’s team, captained by Santa Barbara–born Ben Hallock, won its first medal since 2008 by winning a shootout against Hungary for the bronze.

DREAM TEAM: If you took all the Santa Barbara women who have played water polo in the Olympics from 2004 to 2024, you would have a formidable team: Thalia Munro, Kami Craig, Paige Hauschild, the Neushuls (Kiley, Jamie and Ryann), and Sami Hill, who was the backup goalie to superstar Ashleigh Johnson in 2016. “Kami Craig would have been super impactful [this year],” Ryann Neushul said of the two-time gold medalist from Santa Barbara High who was recognized as the world’s best at the center position.

COMPLETE SET: Karch Kiraly has coached the U.S. women’s volleyball team to all three steps on the podium — a bronze medal in Rio, a gold in Tokyo, and now a silver in Paris. An exhilarating five-set win over Brazil put the Americans in the final, where No. 1-ranked Italy overpowered them. “They are deserving Olympic champions,” said Kiraly, who knows what it takes to be a champion after winning at every level starting at Santa Barbara High, including three Olympic golds as a player.

THE GREATEST: The Paris Games were très magnifique in bringing out the best in such all-time greats as gymnast Simone Biles, swimmer Katie Ledecky, hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, marathoner Sifan Hassan, and Steph Curry, whose barrage of three-pointers had French announcers calling him “the devil.”

FASTER: At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, former UCSB swimmer Jason Lezak swam the fastest 100-meter freestyle in history, a split time of 46.06 seconds during his incredible finish of the 4×100 free relay. That milestone held up until last week in Paris. China’s Pan Zhanle was clocked in 45.92 for his leg in the 4×100 medley relay.

The Olympic track meet was fabulous for U.S. runners (men’s sprint relay excepted) with electrifying finishes by McLaughlin-Levrone, Cole Hocker, Grant Fisher, Noah Lyles, Gabby Thomas, Quincy Hall, Rai Benjamin and Sha’Carri Richardson.

HIGHER: Sweden’s Armand “Mondo” Duplantis, in a breathtaking combination of sprinting and gymnastics, broke his ninth world pole vault record with a gold-medal winning clearance of 6.25 meters. I have an old metric conversion table with measurements by event, and I had to look at the long jump table to find 6.25 equals 20 feet, 6 1⁄4 inches.

Also clearing high bars was Vashti Cunningham, daughter of former Santa Barbara High (and NFL) star quarterback Randall Cunningham. In her third Olympics at only 26 years old, she had her best finish in the women’s high jump, topping 1.95 meters (6’4¾”) for fifth place. She lives in Las Vegas where her father, also her coach, runs a Christian ministry.

High jump gold medal winner Yaroslava Oleksiivna Mahuchikh has not set foot in her homeland of Ukraine since escaping on the day of the Russian invasion.

STRONGER: Added to the Olympics in 2016, the fast-moving sport of rugby sevens drew huge crowds in France. Take a 3½-hour NFL game, remove the huddles, the timeouts, the replay reviews, the halftime show — and you have non stop running, kicking, passing, pushing, shoving, and tackling in a game of two 14-minute halves.

Check out the Santa Barbara sevens event at Elings Park from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. this Saturday, August 17. The S.B. Rugby Club — combining the Grunion men’s team, Mermaids women’s team and Stingrays youth team — will be hosting several Southern California clubs.

ONLY 1,429 DAYS TO GO: Mark the date: July 14, 2028. That’s when the 34th Summer Olympic Games will open in Los Angeles. New sports to be added to the program are flag football, cricket, lacrosse sixes, and squash. Baseball and softball will be restored.

Venues have been chosen. Want to accommodate a big crowd for swimming? A pool installed in SoFi Stadium will do it. The Coliseum, main stadium for the Games in 1932 and 1984, will again stage track and field. Water polo will have a pool at the Long Beach Convention Center. Long Beach also has the waterway for rowing, a sport that took place at Lake Casitas in 1984 and required a satellite village for the athletes in UCSB dorms.

Organizers could not find a suitable facility for softball so it will be played in Oklahoma City. To me, it’s not a bad idea to spread the Olympic spirit to the heartland.

GRIDLOCK GAMES: Athletes are not the only dreamers when it comes to the Olympics. Organizers of the LA28 will use their imaginations to put on a show that reflects the past and present of Greater L.A. as entertainingly as Paris portrayed its history and culture.

I picture the athletes traveling from Long Beach to SoFi Stadium aboard flatbed trucks in the carpool lanes of the 405 freeway, while spectators view them from vehicles stuck in a vast traffic jam. Think of the opening scene of the movie La La Land.

The organizers project a car-free Olympics with ample public transportation. That’s a big reach, but L.A. succeeded in 1984 when commuters took two weeks off. Hours after the closing ceremony, Mayor Tom Bradley declared: “The Olympics are over. Let the traffic begin!”