Brazilians, as the Games went on, did seem to get more excited and interested. But it still never really felt like an Olympics; the Park was soulless in comparison with London 2012 and for every great atmosphere - like at beach volleyball, football and whenever Brazil won a medal - there was a bleaker venue cluttered with empty seats.

The Games may have provided a distraction, but was still seen as inappropriate at a time of such economic and political upheaval. Rio 2016 can also only be considered a true success, remember, if next month’s Paralympics progress smoothly as well…

Rio 2016 also negatively affected the Olympic brand; both in Brazil and elsewhere. Clearly there was resentment from locals when the V-VIP IOC poured in with their special traffic lanes and chauffeur-driven cars. And this eventually manifested itself in the arrest of European Olympic Committee President and IOC bigwig Patrick Hickey in a dawn raid by a motley crew of police and journalists intending to lay down a marker.

Hickey, whatever he turns out to have done, is certainly a pawn in a wider game. The police needed to signal that they meant business and get back at the circus who had so embarrassed them by the antics of four drunken swimmers. Yet there has been a wider legacy of his arrest already. 

There has been little public sympathy for Hickey and, for many, it reinforces a view that those who organise the Olympic Games are little different to the mandarins of FIFA and other maligned sporting bodies. "Are you worried that the enduring memory of these Games will be an IOC member arrested naked in his hotel room?" one journalist asked.

Bach's decision and approach towards not banning Russia from Rio 2016 may have been supported by an all-but-one majority of the members during an IOC Session which left many of us drawing comparisons with a North Korean politburo. Many sports administrators are less supportive in private, however, and the German’s refusal to accept the public zeitgeist on Russia and clamp-down on those who think differently to himself means it is he, rather than Sebastian Coe or Sepp Blatter or anyone else, who is now seen by many as the big baddy in the sports world.

Rio 2016, therefore, has passed, and passed in a non-catastrophic enough a way to leave the IOC purring at a "marvellous" and "iconic" Olympics. But the brilliant performances of the world’s athletes has disguised a myriad of other problems both in Rio and with the wider Olympic brand.

They cannot, though, afford to now get complacent and think that sporting success has covered up some serious problems with the Olympic brand that, if they are not fixed, could have serious repercussions.