Peel back the layers of sporting dreams across the cities of Jakarta and Palembang this past fortnight and hidden underneath are the real stories of the 2011 SEA Games.
Everywhere in the world’s fourth most populous country, its people mourned on Monday night as their football team fell at the final hurdle.
They had won more gold medals than anyone else but lost the only one that mattered to this football-mad nation.
Yet defeat has not diminished the role of Papua pair Patrich Wanggai and Titus Bonai. They scored goals but more importantly, became symbols of a brighter future for their country, which has had to deal with violence and unrest between ethnic Papuans and other groups.
The Thais meanwhile, have had their own distractions as athletes and officials agonise over their families battling the floods back home.
Incredibly, the tragedy has not stopped them from winning. Instead, it has become their motivation, spurring the likes of 16-year-old Chawannooch Salubluek to swim faster as she sought to inspire her fellow Thais rebuilding her broken country and home.
This Games has also unveiled the different faces of courage. It shone determinedly on Fu Mingtian’s sweaty features inside a claustrophobic hall as she discovered within herself an inner strength she had never acknowledged before.
It reverberated too, all over the waters of Lake Cipule, in a single scream by Stephenie Chen as she and kayak partner Suzanne Seah found redemption.
And again it was there, buried in a plucky grandmother’s tears as Tan Yoke Lan refused to allow Stage Two breast cancer to control of her life.
As always, with athletes in the pursuit of greatness, they fought not just their opponents, but themselves and history as well.
An eight-year-old girl showed age was just a number as she twisted and spun her way to a gold medal. But for mixed kempo pair Julianto Perreira and Dorceyana Borges and their country of Timor Leste, numbers were all that mattered as they were starting from zero.
Since 2003, the country has not had a gold at the Games. That changed on Sunday, prompting one official to say: "It is like a dream to see our athletes winning a gold medal. But this is not a dream, it is real."
The 26th Games has ended, and many athletes will return home to a hero's welcome while more will disappear silently into the faceless airport crowd.
Their stories however, will remain with us.