Suni Lee and Cheryl Reeve bookend a Minnesota-flavored Summer Olympics

At the Games invented by the Greeks, Minnesotans were alpha and omega.

Early in the Paris Olympics, we saw Suni Lee, back from illness, exulting. On the last day, we saw Cheryl Reeve and Napheesa Collier exhaling. Their paths represented an American Arc de Triomphe.

Don’t let their fame obscure the reality of sport — that even the champions once were children dreaming of emulating the sports heroes they watched on television.

Over the last two weeks, they created the best kind of television — daily reminders of excellence and class from the place that coined the phrase “joie de vivre.”

What a fortnight.

Simone Biles recovered from the mental block that forced her to drop out of the Tokyo Olympics to win three gold medals and a silver, while leading the United States to the team women’s gymnastics title and making the argument that she is the greatest athlete ever.

Katie Ledecky’s endurance as a swimmer manifested itself in the pool and the history books. She won two golds, a silver and a bronze to become the most prolific Olympic medal winner ever among American women.

Biles and Ledecky are 27. If this was their last Olympics, they went out atop the podium.

With two golds and three silvers, Lakeville’s Regan Smith tied Torri Huske for the most American swimming medals in Paris, and helped the U.S. win its latest contest in an endearing and enduring rivalry with Australia.

Former Gophers diver Sarah Bacon earned Minnesota’s first medal of the Olympics, taking silver with Kassidy Cook in synchronized 3-meter springboard diving.

The Timberwolves’ Anthony Edwards and the Lynx’s Reeve and Collier won gold on the court.

Jordan Thompson of Edina, who won gold in Tokyo while being sidelined with an injury, won silver with the U.S. women’s volleyball team.

BMX racer Alise Willoughby of St. Cloud competed in her fourth Olympics and again failed to translate her world-class status into an Olympic medal. She did star in a commercial featuring her husband, Sam Willoughby, who won Olympic silver in BMX but suffered a freak injury in 2016 that relegated him to a wheelchair. The commercial, produced by Toyota, is art.

While sports like breaking, skeet shooting and surfing represent the new age of the Olympics, the heart of the Summer Games is swimming, gymnastics and track and field.

The U.S. track and field team produced 34 medals, most since the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, which will host again in 2028, reclaiming its onetime dominance in the purest of Olympic sports.

Noah Lyles won the men’s 100 meters, before faltering in the 200 and revealing that he had contracted COVID.

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone dominated the women’s 400-meter hurdles and was spectacular on the winning 4x400 relay.

Gabby Thomas won the women’s 200 meters, and Cole Hocker ran one of the most dramatic races in Olympics history. A longshot, Hocker found himself hemmed in on the inside lane as the men’s 1,500 meters rounded the final curve. To win the final sprint, he had to deke the runner in front of him and cut to the inside, allowing him to go from fifth place to an Olympic record.

Team USA won the overall medal race, with 126 to China’s 91, and tied China with 40 golds. American women won 26 golds, most ever by a single women’s team.

The Olympics shouldn’t be measured with an abacus, though. They should be measured by the stories we didn’t know we couldn’t live without.

On Sunday, Reeve, who has won four WNBA titles with the Lynx, coached the U.S. women’s basketball team to a tight victory over France, which fell one point short when France’s Gabby Williams stepped on the three-point line while making her last-second shot. Said Reeve, after the U.S. women won their eighth straight gold medal: “What better way to finish the Olympics.”

Let’s go back to the beginning, when Lee, the St. Paul native who grew up working with Minnesota-born coach Jess Graba, competed alongside and then against Biles.

Lee won the all-around gold in Tokyo, then spent three years adapting to newfound fame and trying to overcome kidney problems that caused her to gain 45 pounds. Her ability to compete in the U.S. trials at Target Center was long in doubt; her ability to rise to the challenge should not have been.

Let’s get provincial: Biles is the greatest gymnast, but Suni’s is the best story. The daughter of Hmong parents from Laos, Lee performed like a champion while representing a country of immigrants in the city that gave us the Statue of Liberty.

That image of Lee and Biles celebrating with the American flag? Hang it right there in the Louvre.