From gold medals to epic falls, from athletic triumph to public shame, the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro this summer were jam-packed. The International Olympic Committee estimated that around 3.5 billion people watched at least some part of the Olympics this year. With over half of the world’s population tuning in to the games, the Wolf Prints news team wondered what Olympics events did PR students like watching?

Junior Madelyn Norstrom enjoyed watching gymnasts Simone Biles and Laurie Hernandez because they “were really nice” and “performed superbly.”

Emma Jewell also enjoyed watching women’s gymnastics, but she was cheering for a different country – team Switzerland. She thought it was “exciting to see Giulia Steingruber score a bronze medal on vault. Usually Switzerland does not place in gymnastics, so it was a pretty big deal I guess.”

Why Switzerland over USA? “My family is from Switzerland and it is really exciting to see how we can connect across borders through the Olympics.”

Sanjana Nath, PR junior, prefered to watch Michael Phelps and the swimming portion of the games, “because he’s been in every Olympics I’ve been alive for and it’s so amazing to watch him break records that no one could ever do … it’s like watching history being made!”

Other popular sports among PR students were diving, tennis, and beach volleyball.

Some of the most eventful things that drew students were Simone Biles winning four gold medals and one bronze, the US swimming team taking home 33 medals, contributing to the total tally of 121 medals for the US, with 46 of them being gold. Both the men’s and women’s basketball teams won gold, the newly added event of golf drew in a whole new crowd of viewers, and the track and field events were a predictable success.