Rio de Janerio: A review Kitty Chiller would have dreamt of conducting with a wide smile began instead with an inadvertent, audible sigh.
This 9am media call was scheduled to be the Australian team boss's last at these Olympics, but nothing much has been predictable in Rio and that's precisely what dominated discussion.
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As indefatigable as Chiller has been over a four-year chef de mission's role she relinquished a day job for (meeting the standards of her inner perfectionist), on this rainy closing ceremony morning she had the air of someone plain exhausted.
Chiller's face said that. Her sigh said that. And it kind of summed up Australia's Olympics. Games in which there have been joyous exaltations, certainly. But more - many more - sighs of exasperation and lament. The near-miss Games.
Verbally, Chiller did not open with that. "I'm extremely proud of our team" were the first six words of a closing state-of-the-nation she took 10 minutes to read.
Chiller tabled excellent reasons that Australians should join her in feeling this way: Kim Brennan, the women's rugby sevens team, Kyle Chalmers, the women's 4 x 100m freestyle relay team, Jared Tallent becoming Australia's most successful Olympic track and field athlete, Australia's first team medal in archery, first medal in modern pentathlon - a gold at that thanks to Chloe Esposito - equestrian's first medal for Australia since Beijing in 2008, a first gold in shooting since Athens in 2004.
Chiller reminded everyone present that 43 per cent of the team in Rio was under 25. The inference? If that doesn't bode well for Tokyo 2020, what does?
Nothing if not matter-of-fact, it did not take Chiller long to cut to the crunch. Eight gold medals and a total tally - of 29 - less than the haul from London four years ago make campaign Rio, in crude terms, Australia's least successful Olympics in 24 years.
!["Well short": Kitty Chiller sums up Australia's disappointing performance in the Rio Olympics.](/web/20160822085904im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/y/0/j/4/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gqxz2p.png/1471850868907.jpg)
That wasn't just short of where Australia, and Chiller, openly aimed to be. It was, Chiller pronounced solemnly on Sunday, "well short".
While insistent the Australian team should largely be proud of itself for what it produced athletically in Brazil, Chiller ultimately termed the experience, "the most trying Games for many, many people on the official side. Much more so than any Games that I've been involved with and this is my fourth Games as an official."
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She was adamant that off-field issues had zero impact on Australia's on-field performances: "I think what Rio has reminded us is that Olympic medals are not easy to come by."
The chef de mission post she proudly held here - Australia's first woman to land the gig - was presented after retired champion rower Nick Green was diplomatically released by the national Olympic Committee following a London 2012 misadventure.
![Happier times: Anna Meares Australia into the opening ceremony.](http://web.archive.org./web/20160822085904im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/o/8/d/q/image.imgtype.articleLeadwide.620x349.png/1471828201002.png)
Happier times: Anna Meares leads Australia into the opening ceremony. Photo: Joe Armao
Chiller would never have imagined on the last day of the Games she led for the country that she would be asked whether her ongoing position in the post was in jeopardy.
But she was asked. Largely because of an internal bungle, now the subject of internal investigation, that led to nine athletes being charged by police and fined a total of about $37,000 after using stickers - apparently given to them by an Australian team official - to get into a Boomers match on Friday night. Less so because of a medal benchmark Australia did not meet on her watch.
On the question of where this left her, Chiller did not want to go there - "I won't answer that question" - and besides there were other items to tick off.
The Zika virus that made headlines and generated hype internationally in the countdown to the Games, was a "non-event", Chiller said. She has not avoided wearing shorts.
Security in Rio, though, had proved the biggest issue "by a mile", Chiller said.
On Sunday, she recalled her very firm sense of this dating back to August 5 when, all of 90 seconds into marching in the opening ceremony at Maracana Stadium, she took a phone call that informed her two Australian rowing coaches had been robbed at knifepoint 100 metres away from official team lodgings at Ipanema beach.
"And it didn't really stop from there," Chiller said.
!['The Australian Nine': The athletes who were detained by police for accreditation tampering.](http://web.archive.org./web/20160822085904im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/x/e/c/e/image.imgtype.articleLeadwide.620x349.png/1471820344471.png)
The Australian athletes who were detained by police for accreditation tampering. Photo: Screengrab/ABC24
Transport "had its problems", as did the Athletes' Village, a topic Chiller complained about loudly upon arrival.
On the eve of departure she reflected how it had been "problematic at the start. Until Andrew Bogut came to my room to put up my shower curtain and his plumber mates from Dandenong came to fix my toilet." Chiller baulked at a leading question that the whole thing had taken a greater toll on her than anyone in the Australian team.
Next.
In closing, Chiller took her Sunday morning audience back to where it all started officially here for the Australian team: the function where team captain Anna Meares made a room tear up and Australia's Governor-General Peter Cosgrove encouraged athletes to keep their cool, be unafraid of failure, be smarter than their opposition, never give up and fight doggedly.
"It is these things that we must demonstrate if we are to succeed in four years' time, because there is no doubt that we do have the potential."
Potential was the final word in Chiller's speech and it was fitting. A pessimist would say so on account of the many opportunities missed here. An optimist would cast ahead to things to come.