RIO DE JANEIRO — They knew what was about to happen—the script didn’t even need to be read—but still the stadium strained with expectation.
The young and the old stood in front of their seats. A few vendors left their stations and crammed into the aisles. And virtually every man, woman and child wearing red, white and blue at the Olympic Aquatics Stadium on Friday night held aloft their smartphones—500 people frozen in a torch-bearing pose—as their cameras rolled to record the moment for posterity.
Then she strode onto the pool deck. Oh my. The crowd unleashed a roar that thundered throughout the arena.