Just because you didn’t get a little chunk of the Eiffel Tower handed to you while your national anthem played doesn’t mean you didn’t have a successful Olympics! The unfortunate reality of all the biggest stars being in the same place, at the same time, competing for the same three spots, means that there are some damn fine athletes who went home empty-handed. What sucks most about the Olympics is that your performances don’t exist in a vacuum – there are many world-class 1500m runners, for example, who’ve simply had the bad luck to exist at the same time as Faith Kipyegon in her prime.

So before we let the full scope of the 33rd Olympiad get boiled down into Wikipedia charts and medal tables, let’s take a moment to give some serious props to the best non-top-three performances.

Bryce Hoppel’s American record: Imagine telling a track fan a year ago that 1:41.67 would not get you on an 800m podium in 2024. For context, in the eight global championships that have happened since David Rudisha’s world-record run in 2012, there has never been a winning time under 1:42. The American record that Hoppel knocked a huge chunk off of was Donavan Brazier’s 1:42.34 from Doha in 2019, which is still the World Championship record in the event. Hoppel just had the bad luck of crossing the line behind the #3, 4, and #5 fastest men of all time.

Rhasidat Adeleke’s streak of fours: Adeleke, the Irish wunderkind, had a lot of fours next to her name last week. She contested four 400m races (three rounds of the open and the 4 x 400m final) and came up with two fourth-place finishes, with a 49.28 in the open race and a phenomenal 48.92 split on the relay falling just short of the podium in both instances. And in both instances, Adeleke and her teammates were the victims of historic depth – never before in history had three runners broken 49 seconds in the same open 400m race, and never before in history had a 3:19 4 x 400m been insufficient to medal. Fortunately, Adeleke has a lot of championship racing ahead of her as she was the youngest finalist in the 400m final at 21 years old.

Kirani James’s incredible longevity: It’s not often that an Olympic champ finds themselves back in the final 12 years later, particularly in the sprint events where fast-twitch muscles are generally considered the provenance of youth. But James, the 2012 Olympic champion, continues to perform at an amazingly high level, running his fastest time since 2016 in the 400m semifinal and getting under 44 seconds for the ninth and tenth times of his career. What sucks is that four guys ran sub-44 ahead of him in the final.

Emile Cairess’s third marathon: Our America-centric readership who was thrilled by Conner Mantz’s eighth-place finish in the Olympic marathon should read up on the British runner a few places ahead of him. Cairess is a year younger than Mantz, is newer in his marathon career with only three career races under his belt, and has a faster PB at 2:06:46. And Cairess came within 30 seconds of a medal in the marathon in his Olympic debut, running 2:07:29 in his second marathon of the year. The future is very, very bright for this rising star.

Sophie O’Sullivan and Sarah Healy’s bad luck: While the repechage round model has generally received positive reviews, two runners who are probably not thrilled with the new innovation are Irish 1500m runners Sophie O’Sullivan and Sarah Healy. Somehow, both runners managed to finish one spot out of advancing in the first round of racing, came back the next day, and both finished one spot away from the semifinal again. Sullivan, the 22-year-old NCAA star for the University of Washington, was dealt a particularly tough hand, as she clocked a blazing-fast 4:00.23 run in the first round that wasn’t enough to advance.