LONDON — You can sum up the impact of New Jersey athletes on these Olympics in four words: We sure were interesting.

We set world records. We performed in the clutch. We goofed up and got sent home. We backed up our bravado and handled adversity, proving to the world that there is more than one way to define Jersey Strong.

There were only a couple dozen of us here in London representing Team USA, an eclectic group in sports popular and obscure, but few days passed over the last three weeks without one of them making news.

So with the London Games reaching their end, let’s take one last look back at the impact New Jersey had on the Olympics, while looking ahead to which athletes we might see again in 2016.

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• MORE STORIES | • VIDEOS | • PHOTOS





ONE WORLD RECORD, THEN ANOTHER



It might have been the most dominant performance by any swimmer, including that Michael Phelps guy. Rebecca Soni not only set a world record in her best event, the 200-meter breaststroke, during her semifinal heat, but she smashed it one night later during the final.

No one could touch the Plainsboro native in the 200, as she became the first woman to swim the event in under 2:20 — a goal she set while swimming at the Scarlet Aquatic Club in Piscataway — and added a gold in the 4 x 100 medley relay and a silver in the 100-meter breaststroke in her second games.

Will she be back? Soni was noncommittal about swimming in 2016, but at just 25 and with a major sponsorship from Kellogg, it is hard to imagine her hanging up her goggles just yet.

ADVERSITY MET WITH CLASS -- AGAIN

It was a poignant moment that NBC never showed: Matt Emmons, the Browns Mills native who misfired on his final shot in a third-straight Olympics, was answering questions about his failure when the gold-medal winner in the rifle event interrupted.

“If I can comment here,” Italian Niccolo Campriani said in heavily accented English. “It’s not how you win, but how you handle the loss that tells you whether you’re a champion or not.”

The media in the room applauded, and why not? Yes, a poor shot on the final shot meant Emmons won bronze instead of silver, repeating similar misfires in Athens and Beijing. But Emmons won over people with the way he handled the defeat and admitted his nerves.

Will he be back? Emmons is 31, and has said he’ll continue to shoot as long as it makes sense for his young family. Shooters typically hit their prime in their mid 30s, but Emmons has struggled with back problems.

JERSEY IN THE CLUTCH

The U.S. women’s soccer team has bigger stars than Carli Lloyd and Heather O’Reilly. But the two players most familiar with Route 1 in Middlesex County — Lloyd played at Rutgers and O’Reilly grew up in East Brunswick — made their biggest impact when it mattered the most.

First it was O’Reilly, coming off the bench in the 101st minute of a tied game at Old Trafford in Manchester, setting up teammate Alex Morgan with a perfect pass for the winning goal. Then it was Lloyd, who scored the gold-medal winner in Beijing, tallying two goals in the redemption game against Japan.

Will they be back? O'Reilly already has three gold medals but she is just 27, so it's hard to imagine retirement is in her future. Same with Lloyd, a two-time Olympian, at 30. The bigger question is, with the latest pro league collapsing, where will they play until 2016?



THE UNFORTUNATE POT BROWNIE INCIDENT

Hopefully, in the coming months and years, people will see past how Nick Delpopolo’s first Olympics ended and remember how he got there, his rise from a dirt-floor orphanage in Montenegro to the No. 1 U.S. ranking in his weight class.

But for now, it’s about the pot brownie. The Westfield native said in a statement that this was the reason for his failed drug test for marijuana, and that ingesting the drug was unintentional. The IOC doesn’t care about the “how,” just the result, and Delpopolo’s two victories here were purged.

It was one of the few slip-ups for Team USA in London, albeit a small one. “I know that I let down the entire nation, and for that I am truly sorry,” he said in the statement.

Will he be back? Before the incident, the answer was a definite yes. "Judo is my life, and I'm going to go until my body can't go anymore," he said. Maybe 2016 will be about a new chapter: Redemption.



BACKING UP THE BRAVADO

This will be the lasting Jersey image in these Games for me: Jordan Burroughs leaping over a 5-foot barrier to hug his mother after winning the gold that he told the world he would win.

If this wasn’t Jersey, what was?

The Sicklerville native instantly becomes the face of USA Wrestling now, and he hopes that’ll bring more young athletes to a sport that has seen college after college drop it to cut costs. It helps that he’s got a magnetic personality, too. He delivered the best one-liner of the Games when somebody asked if it mattered that he beat an Iranian for the gold medal:

“If the Queen of England came on the mat,” he said, “I’d probably double-leg her.”

Will he be back? He left no question.

“I’ve got a lot of wrestling left in me. I want to be the best ever.”

He’ll be back in four years, part of a Jersey team that’ll have a hard time being as interesting as this one.

Steve Politi: spoliti@starledger.com; twitter.com/StevePoliti