I’ve watched the Olympics while living in different countries. The coverage has always been jingoistic, regardless of the country. However, once the particular broadcaster showing the events began, they continued through to the end, even if the local country’s athletes were no longer in the running.
Japan’s coverage was definitely jingoistic, though they didn’t hesitate to show the USA men’s basketball team losing in Athens, lol. Made sure to get that little jab in.
Yes. Corruption for sure.
Like with FIFA.
Egregious to the core. Committee members who can be easily bought. Arab countries with the oil money and China preying on vulnerable African countries to get the games.
Since blatant doping, match fixing and bribery make up what we call sport these I have to admit I have lost all interest in it.
The 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary was exemplary in that sense. There is still money left over that is being put to good use such as improving sporting facilities.
It worked out pretty well. Jesse Owens won four gold medals and kicked the notion of Aryan superiority in the face, right in front of Hitler.
Anyway, hosting the Olympics these days is an act of self sabotage. As the old saying goes, if your enemy is busy hurting their own economy, don’t get in the way.
Beijing’s last multi-billion investment in an Olympics is now rusting away mostly unused.
If I were an athlete staying in one of their hastily built residences I might bring in my own safety inspector, though.
Never thought I’d agree with you, but yeah, this ^. Not boycotting actually was the smart move.
Beyond that, I just think that boycotting ought not to be a decision made by bureaucrats on behalf of an athletic squad; let the the athletes themselves decide how they want to protest.
Interesting factiod, the medal count for the 1936 games:
Which suggests that those olympics could have been interpreted in different ways. While the United States was rightfully proud of Jessie Owens and other athletes, the Nazis were just as likely shouting that the medal count proved - well, something or other.
One thing that might come into consideration - I’ve read (ca 1970) that the people of the United States don’t have the same fervor for the Olympics that other nations have. For most people of the United States - it’s been “Gee those amateurs are swell, but we could have sent in the pros and taken EVERYTHING.” For people of other nations - it’s much more serious.
That may well have changed in recent decades, in part because, since 1992, the U.S. (and other countries) have been able to send professional athletes to the Olympics, particularly in basketball, hockey, and soccer.
That said, two of the U.S.'s favorite sports – baseball and American football – aren’t Olympic sports, so that may also be a factor. (Baseball was an Olympic sport from '92 to '08, and again this year, though it looks like there are no plans for it to be in future Olympics.)
Prior to 1992, the idea of the “amateur athlete” in some countries, particularly in the Eastern Bloc, was a joke – it was clear that they were athletes first and foremost, and that they had a nominal “job” that acted as a fig leaf to keep their amateur status for the Olympics.
Correct.
However I wonder if other nations still have much more fervor for the games, so a real boycott is not feasible.
Well, they did when the Olympics were first revived; basically the idea was that the Games would be held every 2 years, alternating between Athens and a chosen host city. The 1906 Olympics were actually the most successful so far and originated alot of Olympic traditions, but the IOC ended up “unpersoning” them.
I keep seeing this theme of ‘act of self sabotage’ by people in this thread, so thought I’d address it. Pretty obviously, most are opposed to a boycott for similar reasons to those who were arguing this point in my discussion I talked about in the OP, so just going to move on from that as I seem to be the only one on this side in this debate.
As for ‘self sabotage’, I’m puzzled why anyone in this thread would think the CCP cares about this. They do massive prestige projects all the time that are costly boondoggles that are mainly just to buff up the CCP’s image and creds. This is no different. If it cost 5 times as much they would still do it. It’s a chance for them to, again, take the world stage, show the world (via TV since most foreigners aren’t going to be allowed to actually watch the games live) how far China has come, how powerful they are, and how they have the world coming to them. The subtext of this is that the world loves China and approves of what it’s doing, and it’s only a few contrary foreign forces that are trying to make China look bad talking about all of this forced organ harvesting, genocide, slave labor, forced sterilization and the like…nothing to see here.
This isn’t ‘self sabotage’, it’s valuable propaganda bought on the cheap, as these things go. The CCP doesn’t give a rat’s ass if they make money on this…not even a little bit. Beijing doesn’t care either if they lose boatloads of money on this…that’s all baked into the equation.
Just for a single example, consider the Chinese south/north water transfer project. This was the original brainchild of Mao, just speaking off the top of his head that there is a lot of water in the south and not much in the north, and wouldn’t it be nice… Only, the CCP decided, hell, that sounds great and actually have been building the thing. This has cost the Chinese hundreds of billions of dollars (I think the annual upkeep is over $20 billion)…and these are official figures…and caused the relocation of 100’s of thousands of Chinese citizens (sort of like what happened with the 3 Gorges Dam), and I’ve seen estimates that, if it all works to plan it will deliver something like 1% of the shortfall water needs to Beijing alone. So, lots of money, disruption of families, continued costs, and it’s a boondoggle.
And you guys seriously think that something as small and mundane a boondoggle as hosting an Olympics even gets on the CCP’s radar wrt cost or losing money? 
I watched the Winter 1992 Olympics while in Toronto. Their coverage (CBC?) was far superior to that of NBCs. Firstly, they actually had live coverage, not just the evening pre-digested version. Secondly they concentrated on the events themselves, not spending more than half the coverage time making every freaking athlete a human interest story. It was about the sports. I’ve never enjoyed the NBC coverage ever since that year.
ITA 100%. It’s a concept whose time has come, and long since gone.
However, I don’t make those decisions, so I’m going to be happy for people who go there, and if they win, that’s great too.
Another anecdote: I remember a commentator on “All Things Considered” during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics who got bored with sycophantic American coverage and decided to switch his satellite dish over to the CBC, only to get more of the same from a north of the border perspective. One thing he said was that a Canadian athlete won a medal in a sport only they and their parents would be interested in, and the kept showing it, over and over again.
(and no, it wasn’t curling, which I realize is a winter sport)
Nitpick: The American TV coverage of the 1992 Winter Olympics was on CBS. Not many people remember that CBS had the rights to three consecutive winter games (not summer) in the 90s.
They were just as bad as NBC. In fact, many people comparing the CBS coverage to the NBC coverage of the summer games said the CBS coverage was a lot worse, believe it or not.
Oops, I meant to edit that post, not delete it!
Does anyone remember the subscription-only Triple Cast that was offered during the 1992 Summer Olympics? They anticipated millions of subscribers, and were quite disappointed; most of the people who paid $50 for these three extra channels were sports bars, but I worked a few years later with a man who, with his wife’s permission, did order it because he wanted to watch as much of the Dream Team footage as possible. (Keep in mind that this was way before we had streaming and You Tube.) His then-junior high aged daughters REALLY liked it too, because they got to watch extra gymnastics and equestrian events.
Well I guess even the CBC has succumbed to country-centric coverage. Sorry to hear that.
I watched large parts of the 1984 Summer Olympics from Quebec. Even then, the Canadian broadcast was just as homerish as the US broadcast, if not more so. I don’t remember how many “human interest stories” there were, maybe not as many, but the “rah, rah, rah, go Canada!” vibe was huge.
Sounds like a boycott of NBC’s horrible Olympic coverage would do more good for the world than the US sitting out the Beijing games.
Yeah., the Canadian coverage has always been homerish.
If it might have seemed less so in the past, it might simply be because there wasn’t as much for Canadians to cheer about. With the notable exception of the 1984 Summer Games, where Canada set a country record because the boycott made it easier to win medals, Canada historically sucked pretty bad at the Olympics. In 1976, Canada won no gold medals at all in an Olympics it hosted - a depressingly unique achievement - and at the 1988 Winter Games, incredibly, did the same thing again in Calgary, winning five medals, none gold.
Canada started getting better from that point on, rapidly climbing up the medal tables, and is consistently one of the top medal-farming nations at Winter Games and is better than it used to be at the Summer Games, so the CBC has a lot more to cheer about. Over the course of two weeks, if Canada wins 29 medals as it did in 2018, there’s almost always a Canadian contender to show on TV; if you win five medals, like in 1988, you can go days without having a winner to show the audience.
The USA at the Summer Games doesn’t even have enough time to show all the American medal winners. In each of the last six Summer Games the USA has won over 100 medals, an average of about one medal for every three hours, 24 hours a day, the Olympics are on.