Is it just me or were the Rio Games ultimately dispiriting? Yes, I’m glad as an American that the United States won 121 medals and as a woman that American woman won 61 of them. (Give it up for Title IX.)

And I thought the Christoph Waltz/Samsung Galaxy commercial – in which the two-time Academy Award winner manages to mock superior Eurotrash and over-accomplished, multitasking exceptional Americans at the same time through a series of character vignettes – was just terrific.

But too many athletes reminded me that time is the cruelest opponent. The slumped body language of Gabby Douglas – who won the all-around gold in 2012 only to be eclipsed by Simone Biles in the Rio Games and on hating social media – said more than any gymnastics routine ever could. The classy Missy Franklin – whose title of America’s swimming sweetheart has been passed on to Katie Ledecky – was candid about her mystifying failure.

"I wish I had an excuse, but I don’t, and I’m not going to make up one,” Franklin told The Washington Post. "The truth is I worked as hard as I possibly could. I did everything I could think of doing, and for some reason I fell more short than I ever have before."

Sometimes it’s nothing more than a question of timing. Four years is a long time in an athlete’s life. Maybe it just wasn’t Franklin’s moment. Her acceptance of that, however, was golden with grace.

It certainly wasn’t Novak Djokovic’s moment. It’s interesting that Nole’s two best years to date preceded Olympic years – 2011 and ’15. He may have peaked too soon. (He took the bronze at the 2008 Beijing Games, before his career really took off – which would support my theory.) It’s also possible that he put too much pressure on himself to try for the Golden Slam – the four Slam titles and the Olympic gold. After becoming the first man in 47 years to hold all Slam titles after winning the elusive French Open, he lost his Wimbledon title early on in a match to the middling Sam Querrey, won the Rogers Cup and then lost in Rio in the first round to Juan Del Potro, leaving the court in tears. (In truth, he wasn’t the only one weeping. His good friend DelPo cried, too.)

I don’t buy the idea of the Rio loss being a red flag for Nole’s prospects at the US Open, which begins Aug. 29. DelPo is a first-rate player who’s had some tough injuries, he was playing in his native South America on clay and Nole has had some difficult wins and losses against him. Luck of the draw (or maybe the destiny of the draw.)

Nole sometimes gets himself in trouble by overthinking. That will never be Ryan Lochte’s problem. My God, the great Lochte Rio robbery caper gets worse and worse, as Lochte has now lost four sponsors, including Speedo USA and Ralph Lauren.

As I initially suspected, the truth lay somewhere between what Rio Police said and what Lochte said. It turns out that the gas station where the drunken Lochte and his partying teammates stopped to urinate wasn’t trashed by the quartet. Rather, Lochte tore some sign and got into it with gun-wielding guards, who demanded money for the damage, which they paid.

The Portuguese-English language barrier was a key factor and kudos to bilingual bystander and Good Samaritan Fernando Deluz, who intervened. Had he not, the outcome may have been tragic.

The language barrier underscores the notion of the Ugly American who goes abroad with nary a clue to other cultures or languages. (Frankly, this is what has helped doom us in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.) It is ironic since Lochte’s mother, Ileana, the first to spread the story her son told her of a robbery, is Cuban-born and speaks Spanish well. Presumably, her son has heard her speak Spanish, and if you know Spanish, you can understand Portuguese. But then, Americans don’t place a high premium on foreign languages, because they don’t have to, unlike Europeans who are surrounded by many countries and languages. (Nole speaks at least five – Serbian, English, German, Italian and French – perfectly.)

This is not to demean Lochte’s intelligence. Different strokes, different folks. Nole is an intellectual person who enjoys chess, classical music and journaling. Not for him the unexamined life.

Clearly, Lochte is not interested in the examined Emersonian life. Were he, he would’ve instantly understood that the cover-up is always worse than the crime. Furthermore, he would’ve grasped that by taking full responsibility for a craven situation, he could’ve controlled it, ultimately spinning it the way he wanted.

Did he think he was being robbed? Did he refuse to cave to what he thought was extortion? Was he merely standing up for himself? It’s possible but all that – including his compassion, courage, generosity, family-mindedness and beauty – have been drowned out now.

Now he must fight for the surface – an actor in search of a narrative that is no longer his to tell.