And also I will support Ai Fukuhara, Japanese table tennis player.
I love their national anthem, including the twelve hours of screaming souls.
It’s too early for me to have a strong rooting interest, but there are always non-American athletes that I enjoy watching and start to root for.
One of my favorites was British triple jumper Jonathan Edwards.
That reminds me – I will definitely be rooting for British diver Tom Daley.
I keep an eye on the Slovakian team medals but since I don’t have cable, just NBC, it’s hard to catch them on tv.
I find it hard to root for my own country at the Summer Olympics, let alone any other. I rarely watch much more than the opening and closing ceremonies.
The Winter Olympics are where it’s at!
I pay an outsized amount of attention to a single Olympic sport, namely track and field. There I tend to support the USA and Canada, but there are other individuals that I pull for, especially when none of the above have realistic medal chances.
One such example is Czech javelin thrower Barbora Spotakova, who four years ago beat Russia’s Maria Abakumova…on the last throw…with a European record…on the 40th anniversary of the Soviets crushing the Prague Spring. I also like the Kenyan men’s javelin thrower, Julius Yego, who taught himself to throw via YouTube. There’s New Zealand shot putter Valerie Adams, who is a more successful athlete than her brother Stephen (OKC power forward). I also want to see Kim Collins, St. Kitts & Nevis’s 40-year-old sprinter, make it to the 100 meter final–the dude ran for TCU back in the 90s! Sprinters just don’t hang on that long.
Most of all, I want to see Ezekiel Kemboi dance one more time.
I root for it to end ASAP and there are no terrorist attacks like Munich or Atlanta. Might be okay if it was “hey we got these nice competitions” bbbuuutttt nnnnoooooo!!! They got to build it up and tell me how Michael Phelps or Marion Jones is representing me. Beeswax…they are in it for themselves and see me only as a source of money.
I choose a random country to root for for each game of team handball.
Aside from Dave Wottle, who I mentioned in the favourite athletes thread, I read about Gail Devers before the 1992 Oympics, she’d contracted Graves Disease and just a couple of years earlier doctors were seriously considering amputating her feet. She came back and won the 100m, which I thought was wonderful.
Us Brits do tend to “adopt” foreign sports stars. Seve Ballesteros and Frankie Dettori were arguably the most popular performers in their respective sports in recent times.
Also, I’m given to understand that Diego Maradona is very popular in Scotland.
I root for the Americans. Which for me, during the Olympics, means “North America”, or at least the big three. So I cheer for Canada and Mexico, as well as the United States.
Like everybody else, I like underdogs and great stories. I think it was in the Lillehammer Winter Olympics that the last finisher of the men’s cross-country skiing 10 kilometer classic race was a Kenyan former middle-distance runner who’d taken up skiing. I cheered for him. The awards ceremony was delayed because the winner of the race, a Norwegian, waited at the finish line so that he could hug the Kenyan and congratulate him. So I rooted for the Norwegian, too. Classy thing to do.
(ETA: Nope, I just looked it up; it was the 1998 Nagano Games, the gutsy Kenyan skiier was called Philip Boit, and the classy Norwegian was Bjørn Dæhlie.)
Yes…less so now.
I support the following countries:
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USA - I am from there and remain a citizen.
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England - Mom is from there and raised me as a good English boy.
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S. Korea - My kids are Korean. I still hope America finally beats them in archery. Doubtful, by still.
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Rest of the UK. - just because.
In 2014 I rooted for Italian speedskater Francesca Lollobrigida simply because her name is Francesca Lollobrigida.
For all I know her surname may be very common, but I gotta ask, any relation to the actress?
Gina Lollobrigida is her great aunt.
I was born here through no choice or hard work on my part so I never really felt the need to cheer for America first and foremost.
I couldn’t care less about athletes from my own country winning. I’m not sure why I’m expected to feel pride in the victory of someone I don’t know just because we share the same citizenship. I don’t feel any closer to a French athlete than to an Italian or nepalese one.
As a result, I always root for the underdogs, those suceeding against all odds, etc…
I was dissapointed that Iceland didn’t win against France in the Euro soccer game last week-end, for instance.
It must be wonderful to be a paragon of political correctness like you are. I’m so jealous…
What you wrote just shows that you don’t realize that people are different. Tons of people, like me, couldn’t care the slightest bit about whether or not athletes from their country are getting medals at the Olympics, and are perfectly able to root for whoever they judge deserves it the most, or whoever has the most charming smile, or like in my case the underdog, or just don’t root for anybody and just enjoy the show. This has exactly zero to do with political correctness.
Can you tell me exactly what makes you rejoice when complete stranger A who happens to be a citizen of your country defeats complete stranger B who happens not to be? And why you assume this to be an universal feeling?
Yes. Tribalism.
If a member of your family was competing, would you support them?
If a personal friend was competing would you support them?
It’s obviously not a universal feeling, I didn’t say it was.
I like the parade of athletes during the opening ceremonies, especially for the teams from smaller, even third world countries. Some know they have no chance of winning, but are so happy just to be there and to represent their country.