Faceless Victories

Looks like I've been away from commenting on the Winter Games for awhile; in fact, I missed Julia Mancuso's gold-medal-winning giant slalom run last night because I went to a concert I already had a ticket for. (I knew in advance about Mancuso, though.) The outcome of the ladies' figure skating competition was surprising, to say the least. I expected the winner to be either Sasha Cohen or Irina Slutskaya, and I paid full attention to their performances. By contrast, I only paid half-attention to the performance of Shizuka Arakawa of Japan, and she ended up coming out of nowhere to win the gold medal - a fate that always eluded her countrywoman Midori Ito.

What I don't get about the reaction to Team USA is how disappointed everyone is in the medal count. The United States is second overall as of yesterday, right behind Germany (23 to their 24). So what's the problem? Hmmm, maybe it's the fact that the team's biggest stars - the folks people were expected to talk about long after the Winter Games are over - all stumbled in one form or another: Sasha Cohen, the men's hockey team (not to mention Bode Miller, so I won't!). Most of the medals, especially the gold medals, were won by more obscure team members, and in more obscure sports. So there was no one star or team to define these Games for us.

To many Americans, paying more attention to the lesser-known athletes than the big names is like paying more attention to the supporting cast of Gone With the Wind than to Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh (that's not going to sit very well with Olivia deHaviland!). This is a childish attitude that minimizes and trivializes the accomplishment of athletes whose names and/or events don't captivate the nation as much as figure skating. Maybe no one cares that the U.S. men's curling team won its first Olympic medal - a bronze - ever. But the fact is, the team won it, each teammate gets his own bronze medal to take home with them, and the medals are theirs! So, again, what's the problem?

Granted, these Winter Games have lacked star power. But so what? The 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary had "star power" courtesy of Brian Boitano, the last American to win the gold medal in men's figure skating. I remember going into a coffeehouse on the campus of my college the night he competed in the free skate, and the usual murmuring of the customers (what few there were that night) and the wait staff was absent; everyone was quietly watching Brian Boitano on TV. (A big deal, to be sure, since the coffeehouse normally didn't keep a TV set in there.) Apart from the Jamaican bobsledding team, it was the highlight of those Games. But that hardly mattered to the U.S. team, which won a pathetic six - count'em, six - medals overall that year. Apart from Boitano and speed skater Bonnie Blair, no Americans won gold. It was so bad, interest in the '88 Winter Games evaporated quickly, despite the fact that many events were aired live due to Calgary only being one hour ahead of Los Angeles and two hours behind New York. So sure, Brian Boitano and Bonnie Blair were superstars, but the rest of the team. . . kinda sucked!

Now that we have a winning team, we Yanks are complaining that our biggest medal winners are too faceless? Geez, there's just no pleasing people.