Non-Americans may find this odd, but there’s a reason for the sentimental, “soap opera” coverage to the Olympics: the vast majority of the Olympics’ viewers in the USA are women!
Male sports fans in the USA may watch one or two events at each Olympiad, but women are the ones who tune in to watch most events. Male fans generally wanbt to watch the competition without any fluff… but female fans seem to eat up that Oprah-esque stuff.
I remember once watching an American bio of some athlete. Then the sad music started playing and they mentioned the death of the athlete’s great-aunt two years prior. Not to disrespect anybody’s great-aunt, but I thought “man they are trying too hard to find tragedy”.
I must ask; where did you get this idea from? Sounds like complete drivel to me, and frankly makes you look bad, IMO, YMMV, whatever…
My problem with Americans and the Olympics is not the atheletes, or some of the attitude some of them may or may not have. What bugs me is how america-centric the Amercian media coverage is. I can watch NBC or CBC (I watch CBC mostly I am Canadian), but some events NBC shows I find more interesting, and my god! You would think no one but Americans compete in the Olympics. CBC tends to do a better job of showing other atheletes, and I vastly prefer it as I think it reflects more olympic ideals to do so.
Damn straight. Talk is cheap. Where are the pictures?
I support my country’s athletes for the same reason you probably support your country’s atheletes - because they’re representing my nation.
I don’t really think there’s anything more or less in it than that.
One of the American swim teams, 4x100 relay I think it was, did their country a massive disservice - forgotten whether it was Sydney or the one before that. “We’ve going to smash the Aussies like guitars” was the boast, and ooooh it was sweet when we beat them again anyway. Being Aussies our guys played air-guitar at them afterwards, just to rub it in.
Erm, the OP was about the attitude of the athletes, not of the fans.
Well, bravo to CBC if they do indeed do this.
Because i can tell you, having grown up in Australia, that the narrow parochialism of the American media is not unique to the United States. Spend any time around the Olympics watching the Australian media, and you’ll see nothing but a barrage of feel-good stories about the Aussie athletes. And when you watch the coverage, if an Australian wins you’ll be lucky if you can work out who placed second and third, because they’ll be too busy interviewing the winner.
The Commonwealth Games are coming up next month in Melbourne, and i’m glad i’m not in Australia, to be honest, because it allows me to avoid the hype. The Commonwealth Games get about as much coverage in the US as Enlgish county cricket. A good thing, too, because the Commonwealth games are stupid and pointless, and should be discontinued forthwith.
If it sounds like drivel to you, that’s because you don’t know anything about the subject.
Women make up a sizable majority of Winter Olympics viewers, which is why the Winter Olympics don’t have the same advertisers as standard sporting events.
Pro baseball, basketball, hockey and football games in the U.S. make their money through beer and automobile commercials. The WInter Olympics have advertising aimed at women. Coincidence? Nope.
Frankly, the fact that you argued the point without knowing the facts makes YOU look bad.
http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/21/commentary/column_sportsbiz/sportsbiz/?source=yahoo_quote
Anecdotally, our household confirms this trend.
I’m a huge sports watcher; my wife generally avoids watching sports whenever possible.
So far, i’ve watched no Winter Olympic coverage at all; she has watched about three or four hours of figure skating.
[nitpick]Apolo is his name. Ohno was not named for Apollo, the Greek god of sunlight and prophecy. His unique first name was given to him by his father, who combined the Greek words “Ap,” meaning “steering away from,” and “lo,” meaning “look out, here he comes.”
Is this true? Cite?
All i could find on the subject was this article, which says:
That’s almost a century ago. Not sure if something similar still happens now.
I see mhendo has managed to dig something up.
I had never heard of it before it was mentioned by the tv announcers at the opening cermonies. I didn’t know that anybody dipped their flag in the first place.
Not the best cite I suppose but
http://www.worldmagblog.com/blog/archives/007509.html
The announcers on TV said it was a dip to the host nation. This site says it is a dip to the olympic banner.
I found this.
Not sure what they mean by “disrespect”. I guess disrespect to the flag itself, if that’s possible?