Rio’s first case of a poor winner, 19-year-old American swimmer Lilly King, made me thankful for having gotten a glimpse during the Olympic opening ceremonies of four old Brazilian models of sporting graciousness.

Joaquim Cruz, Gustavo Kuerten, Oscar and Hortencia—endearing characters who brought a strong dose of courtesy to their significant, exuberant athletic skills—could offer a lesson to the boastful, lecturing King, wagging her finger at Russia’s Yulia Efimova in the process of King winning their 100-meter breaststroke duel.

In my more than four decades of covering international sports, it was a treat to cross paths with the four Brazilians during high points in their careers. And it was heartening to see them honored this month—Cruz and Oscar as two of the six who marched the Olympic flag into Maracana Stadium, Kuerten and Hortencia as two of the last three links in the torch relay to light the Olympic cauldron. Possibly candidates for most American viewers’ Who’s That? list, that quartet in fact ranks at the top of Brazil’s Who’s Who, both as athletic heroes and goodwill ambassadors.

By contrast, we now have the talented but self-righteous King, who dismissed Efimova as a “drug cheat….I’m not a fan” and repeatedly made a point of her own purity.

Efimova indeed was suspended for 16 months after a prohibited stimulant was found in her system during an out-of-competition test almost three years ago. But her Rio eligibility involved two not-yet-definitive circumstances: Evidence of a state-sponsored doping operation in Russia (though it is unclear whether that touched all Russian athletes, while Efimova was training in southern California for years), and Efimova’s positive test in March for meldonium, which the World Anti-Doping Agency acknowledged may have been taken by Efimova and others—legally—prior to it being added to the banned list on Jan. 1.

The complexities—all the gray areas and uncertainties, including a Russian report that U.S. star Michael Phelps’ “cupping” therapy might be similar to meldonium use for promoting quick recovery—appear to indicate that Lilly King should stay in her lane. Just swim, already, and enjoy success on the grand stage.

Be a little more like Gustavo Kuerten—Guga, to Brazilians—who was a three-time French Open tennis champion and ranked No. 1 in the world when he was upset by Yevgeny Kafelnikov—a Russian!—in the 2001 U.S. Open quarterfinals. Kuerten, who carried a big, goofy smile everywhere and refrained from fits of temper, was quizzed after that Kafelnikov loss on his perceived nonchalance about failing to win a Grand Slam tournament on any surface other than the French’s red clay.

“It’s not that I don’t care,” Kuerten said then. “But I’m not giving all my life for that. I think, if you don’t get upset when you lose, it’s very bad. If you’re comfortable with losing, it’s not fine. So I feel disappointed and I fell frustrated. But, also, maybe tonight I can have a good dinner, drink one beer, go out. If I had won, I don’t have this chance. So that’s the good part.”

Oscar—full name, Oscar Schmidt, though he was on a first-name basis with the international basketball community and known as Mao Santa (Holy Hand) in Brazil—introduced himself to the jingoistic U.S. basketball culture at the 1987 Pan American Games in Indianapolis. A 6-8 ½ sharpshooter, Oscar scored 46 points to lead Brazil to a gold-medal victory over the heavily favored Yanks, lifting Brazil from a 20-point first-half deficit.

Rather than gloat and trash talk, Oscar attributed his team’s victory to “using experience and excitement,” and agreed with the notion that the Americans were “the best, absolutely.” One reason he had turned down a chance to play in the NBA after the Nets drafted him in the sixth round in 1984, he said, was that he foresaw himself spending too much time on the Nets bench.

“I would rather play 40 minutes and play with my friends” on the Brazilian national team, he said. Not until 1989 were NBA players allowed to play for national teams (and not until 1992 in the Olympics), and meanwhile Oscar began a run of five Olympics, 38 games, in which he scored 1,094 points for a 28.8 average.

He and fellow marksman Marcel Souza, who scored 30 in that Pan Am final against the U.S., were known in Brazil as the team’s “piano players,” while their teammates were “the piano carriers.” Oscar said, “One of us shoots and the other four go for the rebound. If my friend makes 40 or I make 40, that’s good, if we win. Any shot is a good shot. Any time. Sometimes, the shots go it.”

Cruz, when he upset world record holder Sebastian Coe of Great Britain in the 1984 Los Angeles Games’ 800-meter final, likewise served as a reminder that Olympic observers must be ready for the unexpected. He opened his post-race press conference by playfully inquiring, “Anyone here speak Portuguese? No? Too bad.”

He was, in the Olympic spirit, a citizen of the world—son of a recently deceased Brazilian carpenter, studying and running at the University of Oregon. To defeat Coe, who these days is a British lord and president of the international track and field federation, “It is impossible to describe my feelings,” Cruz said then. In two languages, he said, “I do not know words to say it.”

Then there was Hortencia—Hortencia Maria de Fatima Marcari—the splindy, excitable hoops star who made her first national basketball team at 15. She was 31 years old when she led Brazil to the gold medal in the 1991 Havana Pan Am Games, 36 and still a central figure with the 1996 Atlanta Olympic silver medalists. Flashy and emotional, Hortencia would pound the press table on her way downcourt, exulting over every point. She would gesture wildly in animated discussions with teammates. Hers was a universal display of competitive joy with which anyone, anywhere, could identify.

So, likely it is a curmudgeonly reaction to juxtapose Lilly King’s finger-wagging (and Michael Phelps’ similar gesture) to those Brazilian examples of sporting spirit and manners. The moral disgust over doping, after all, is thoroughly reasonable. It’s just that all the personal factors, political expectations and testing imperfections involved in substance abuse are unknowable.

Given that, might a gold medal provide contentment enough for King? Modern Olympics founder Pierre de Coubertin argued, a bit magnanimously, that “the most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part. The essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.”

But even conquering, without chemical aid, ought to need no further comment. As 17^th Century Welsh poet, orator and Anglican priest George Herbert put it, “Living well is the best revenge.”