The New Yorker:

As the 2024 Games come to a close, taking stock of watching Noah Lyles, Nic Fink, Sha’Carri Richardson, and more through NBC’s lens.

By Vinson Cunningham

I can’t be the only one who is delighted and amused but also, on a deep level, totally baffled—like a museumgoer at an early exhibition of Surrealist art—by the constant televisual presence of Snoop Dogg at the Olympics. It seems like every time you turn on NBC or one of its affiliates, there he is, dressed up, for instance, in full equestrian gear with his hair pulled back, playing twinsies with his TV work wife—seriously, why are they always together?—Martha Stewart. Their helmets matched and their high boots gleamed. Snoop sounded out the term for the maneuver called “passage,” riding that final vowel sound like a fleet horse, and—probably for the first time in history—the word sounded not only snooty but sleek, plus truly hilarious. “That’s a hell of a crip walk,” he said after a particularly nice horsy move. Then, later, Snoop was sitting courtside next to the basketball genius A’ja Wilson, cheering on the puerile high jinks of Joel Embiid, the huge, hyper-skilled U.S.A. center who, at the moment, seemed to be making a series of chopping gestures in the direction of his crotch. (Embiid, born in Cameroon, is in an ongoing battle with the crowds in France—he was granted French citizenship in 2022, but declined to represent the country in the Olympics—and Snoop Dogg knows from stylish feuds.) When Simone Biles and her teammates won the gymnastics team gold, Snoop, far away from the diminutive prodigies but prominently placed among the crowd, smoothly danced in celebration, all shoulders and swaying torso. Biles saw him and smiled—a Snoop dance is its own kind of medal—and danced right back in his direction.

If you happened to be watching highlights of the doubles badminton match between the Chinese and American teams, you might have heard Snoop’s kinetic, super-quick commentary on a particularly energetic series of volleys. He used the diction of a rapper and displayed the processing power of a supercomputer:

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