Everyone's a winner, baby

on watching and not watching the Olympics

I’m sure many of you are watching the Olympics. I have tuned into a few events, though not with the level of interest I had as a kid. They loomed larger back then. Now it’s just one of dozens of things going on, and it doesn’t help that the organizers themselves are contributing to making it seem trivial and stupid.

I don’t think this is what Pierre de Coubertin had in mind

The Olympics grew over the decades from a decidedly chaotic and amateur beginning. The winner of the marathon in 1904, Thomas Hicks, was given strychnine and brandy by his coach during the race - he was hallucinating as he crossed the finish line and collapsed. The first American woman to win an Olympic medal was Margaret Ives Abbott - a tourist who entered a golf tournament in Paris, without even knowing it was an Olympic event.

What does it mean today to win at the Olympics? After the First World War, the games became more focused on international harmony and friendship: nationalism but peaceful. That after the hell of 1914-18, athletes from different nations could shake hands, and compete to demonstrate the best of human achievement. Of course by the 1936 Berlin Games, the Olympics could be used as a theatre for the grand scope of national ambition. Hitler wanted to demonstrate his nation’s superiority, both as competitors and as hosts of an epic spectacle.

The ridiculousness of the opening ceremonies has grown in years. More interesting to me though was the shift around the 1980s/90s, that athletes no longer marched around the track, in smart uniforms, as though representing their countries for an audience. They weren’t there to be observed, but to enjoy.

Photo by Miguel Machado on Unsplash

Rather, more and more of them strolled around, held ‘Hi Mom’ signs, as though they were the audience. They ambled along in tracksuits, taking photos. And we, the global audience, were somehow watching them have a fun vacation. They stopped feeling like it was their job to present a particular image. Or that anyone else had a right to care how they looked or acted.

At the opening ceremony this year, a singer performed “Imagine” (the absolute anthem of midwit cringe), creating an unintentionally hilarious counterpoint of “imagine there’s not countries” after we’ve just been introduced to all the teams and their flags.

Nonetheless, the whole rigmarole of flags national anthems does make it seem as though they are somehow representing us. We cheer for our own athletes, even as we recognize it’s hardly an even playing field (large nations field teams of hundreds; some small countries may only send one or two competitors. How fair is a “medal table” under those circumstances?). And that’s before we get into the issue of nationality-switching - and how certain countries’ recruiters seem to make no bones about picking up foreign talent to add to their “national” teams.

So what does it mean to win a medal for your country? Some countries certainly incentivize it with cash rewards to their athletes who bring back a medal. This in itself shows the disparities of income even among professional competitors. Spain currently offers $111,562 to someone who wins a gold medal, something Carlos Alcaraz seems on track to do in the tennis. But Alcaraz, at 21, has already won more than $31 million in prize money. His singles victory at Wimbledon just this summer came with a purse of £2,700,000. For him, another hundred grand is a rounding error.

Meanwhile, to a hurdler or shotputter, or participant in another less-marketable sport, that amount of money could make a huge difference. Most olympic athletes receive some level of support from their government, and some level of subsidized training, but not necessarily to huge degrees. Many still have other jobs - although that too is a challenge, when training for the Olympics takes hours every day.

For decades the IOC maintained the ideal of the contest being amateur only: even as the line between amateur and professional became increasingly blurred. In the 1980s they officially allowed professionals to compete, essentially acknowledging what had already become the case. But it allowed the “Dream Team” of NBA players to enter the basketball - adding medals to the various NBA rings and millions of dollars they already had.

When the modern Olympics started, it was something new. A chance for a real international contest, for athletes to strut their stuff. But in recent decades it’s become one among many. Governing bodies of various sports hold their own world championships, separate to the Olympics - and give out medals too. Every time I turn on the TV there’s a world championship of something or other. Most of these contests were started decades after the Olympics (the hockey world cup started in 1971; the basketball world cup in 1950; World Acquatic championships 1973; etc). For some sports to the chance to be a “world champion” and win a medal comes around much more frequently than the Olympics. Likewise for viewers, even the keenest sports fan has championship fatigue.

And as we have seen with golf at the Olympics, some of that sport’s top level players weren’t even that interested in attending - they want to win the Open or the Masters; the Olympics isn’t on their radar.

For sports that are less monetized, there are of course opportunities for sponsorship. General Mills pays athletes to put them on the Weeties box - according to Forbes, in the $70-100k range for lesser-known athletes.

They can get paid by Nike or Adidas for wearing their gear. But some are more creative. Italian gymnast, Giorgia Villa, is sponsored by cheese. Really. The Parmigiano Reggiano cheese consortium support her, and she just won a silver medal. Check out her instagram.

That’s the best thing I’ve learned about this Olympics. If someone else is sponsored by Ragu and pasta, let me know.