Just what Americans needed: another reason for the rest of the world to think we are loud, selfish, spoiled and obnoxious. In the Torino Olympics, American athletes made fools of themselves.
I am not talking about the medal count, although sports commentators don’t seem too happy about that either. I am referring to American athletes’ sportsmanship. There were many problems in Torino, not just with the athletes, but also with the press and with the Games themselves.
The U.S. was second only to Germany in total medals, with 25 and 29 respectively. Although the press had high hopes for “the best Olympics team ever,” headlines only emphasized athletes’ tumbles, missteps and, gasp, silver medals.
When Sasha Cohen won her silver medal, the L.A. Times showed her crashing on the ice rather than celebrating on the podium. In an interview, Cohen admitted to horrible disappointment, saying, “I’ve seen a couple pictures of me falling, you know, in the interviews they like to replay that. That was hard for me.”
Of course, Cohen is an example of an athlete who was at least able to admit that it was simply part of life and move on. Meanwhile, fellow American figure skater Johnny Weir blamed everything from his bus schedule to “bad karma” for his poor free skate.
Since when was an Olympic silver medal so terrible? Athletes compete against the world’s best in their sport and, as the truly articulate speedskater Apollo Ono said in an interview with Bob Costas after his first bronze medal, he won that medal; he did not lose it. Despite a new maturity and wisdom he did not possess four years ago, Ono did not seem to get the same respect from Americans he’d gotten last Olympics, at least until he won another gold and bronze medal.
While Weir was immature, speed skater Shani Davis, the first black person to medal in the winter Olympics, was outright nasty, actually causing reporters to ask him why he was so angry. Although he probably was not in an easy situation, there’s no excuse for his insolence.
Add to the mix the ski team, with Julia Mancuso’s tiara and Resi Stiegler’s pearls. They seemed more like five-year-olds playing dress up in their mommies’ closets than athletes. It seems like every athlete has to be a star on a Wheaties box.
And oddly, the stars who do make it to the Wheaties box, such as Bode Miller, shouldn’t be there. He went home empty handed, but he truly deserved to lose his Nike endorsement privileges when he told the nation he went skiing bombed.
Justice was served when Lindsay Jacobellis tried to flashily grab her board with meters left in the snowboarding cross race, fell and lost what seemed like an inevitable gold. The competition alone should have been fun enough.
There have been amazing athletes who have gracefully overcome obstacles, highlighted in the stories that Bob Costas narrates to emotional music and memorable races, but most of the stories were not from the Americans. And I could not shake the feeling that something was off.
When a gold medal makes or breaks an athlete’s future—it could be, after all, the difference between retiring at the age of 19 or coaching high school hockey in upstate New York—it is understandable that he would put a huge emphasis on winning.
But there have always been pressures and money. In this Olympics, our athletes, on the whole, handled these pressures with all the grace of 13-year-olds, and were just as self-involved. Instead of bringing us to our feet in cheers, we were left squirming in our chairs as America’s image took a Bode Miller tumble.
