As for the general interest in the Olympiad, it falls every time, this is obvious. And no amount of action by the Olympic committee to add new sports to attract a young audience is helping.
From where did you get this feeling? I have travelled to 3-4 countries and I could say that all of them takes Olympics extremely seriously. And I heard from my friends in India that the entire country is celebrating non-stop, since Neeraj Chopra won their first ever athletics gold yesterday. Maybe in authoritarian countries such as Russia, national sports teams are associated with the regimes in power and that may result in people not supporting them. But I can assure you that in 95% of the countries that is not the case.
Both your and my impression are subjective, I think it is worth waiting for some final data, such as the number of views of sports broadcasts. It seems to me that even if the share of views will be the same as in the old days, this will mean a drop in general interest, since I can hardly imagine the representatives of the young and even middle generation who watch TV. And I have not seen any boom in interest in the Olympiad on the internet, perhaps I am in my own information bubble, but apart from information about scandals, I have not seen anything here.
It happened after all! The USA confidently took the first place in gold medals on the last day of the Olympiad. Given the huge advantage in silver and bronze medals, this can be called total domination.
I'm not sure about 'total domination'. Everywhere apart from the US counts the country with the most golds as top of the table, and this time it was exceptionally close. The US certainly have the most medals, but I think China will continue to rise and will battle it out for number 1 spot with the US next time, and at future Olympics.
One weird thing about this Olympics for the US is that they are usually so dominant in the men's sprinting... but this time they didn't get a single gold.
First place is first place even if you are ahead of your opponent by a split second
Total domination was expressed in the fact that even having failed in some sports, the United States still took first place.