The Olympics the Rest of the World Sees
As an Olympic nut from the US (see this post), I’ve been spoiled.
Watching the Games here, I know I can watch pretty much any event I want any time I want on any platform I want (this year, in addition to broadcasting on five different broadcast, cable and streaming platforms, NBC made it possible for you to get personalized highlight feeds narrated by an AI-generated voice of Al Michaels).
I’ve gotten used to being able to talk with people I run into about “that thing” that happened last night with an American athlete (pick one – the thing Simone Biles did on the vault, that pommel horse guy with the glasses, that come-from-behind Hocker run in the 1500. Noah Lyles ran that fast with COVID? Why can’t the US men’s 4x100 team pass the baton? How about Katie Ledecky?!) and know that the person I am talking to saw it too.
In the US, I’m confident I can, at any time, find someone from my home country doing something on some field somewhere, with a decent chance of winning.
It’s not like that for most of the rest of the world. I was in Costa Rica for Week 1 of this year’s Games, and the Olympics were, well, nowhere in the conversation.
Costa Rican TV Olympic coverage looked like this: commentary from a studio in San Jose, but no control over which events were shown.
There was a channel carrying the Olympics, but only one, and only for a few hours a day. And the events it was showing seemed totally random. There was coverage of a Netherlands vs. Hungary team handball game, horse jumping featuring Great Britain and Spain, fencing with the US vs. Canada, ping pong matches between China and South Korea. For long stretches the broadcast feed showed empty venues, waiting for activity to start.
Truth is, there were a few participants from Costa Rica in the competition, but they didn’t stick around for long. Of the six “Tico” athletes competing, one didn’t finish a cycling race, a judo participant lost in the round of 32, two swimmers finished 18th and 35th, respectively. Gerald Drummond reached his goal of getting to the semifinals of the 400 meter hurdles, but finished 7th in his heat. A guy who took me surfing there was aware of female surfer Brisa Hennessy, but wasn’t sure how she was doing in the Olympics (she came razor close to a medal, finishing 4th). All in all, it was a pretty typical year for Costa Rica Olympians: in its history, Costa Rica has only four medals, all going to two sisters in swimming.
Brisa Hennessy came closest for Costa Rica this year — but finished fourth.
But that’s the way the Olympics goes for most of the world. In contrast to the US, which, going into these Games, had won 2975 medals, 66 of the participating countries have never won any medals, another 65 nations have won fewer than 10 medals over the years. Monaco is 0 medals in 32 Olympics, Andonna is 0 for 25, Bolivia 0 for 22 (“It’s frustrating, definitely,” Marco Luque, president of the Bolivian track and field federation, told the New York Times, “And you feel impotence, of not being able to do better.”)
There are ways to do “better” in the Olympics, of course, even if you are a small country.
Money can’t buy you love; but it can buy you medals: Norway, a country with roughly the same population as Costa Rica (both 5+ million), has poured 2/3 of its national lottery proceeds (about $400 million a year, into sports. Norway has bought athletes more professional coaches, built better facilities and raised the profile of sports participation in the country: by the age of 25, 93% of Norwegians have taken part in an organized sport. The payoff? Norway has moved beyond dominance in the Winter Olympics (it ranks #1 among all nations in Winter medals) to become a legitimate threat in the Summer Olympics as well, with 163 medals, 40 times Costa Rica’s total (and 4 times India’s total of 35). Hungary and Cuba have benefited similarly from big government investments.
Go all in on something niche: Jamaica has half the population of Costa Rica, but it is the global power in sprinting. Usain Bolt’s mother credits Jamaica’s success to the amount of yams athletes grow up eating; others credit coffee, or a mysterious “sprinter’s gene.” But a huge part of Jamaica’s success is that sprinting is a narrow national obsession: any possible sprinter is identified early on, connected to great coaching, given government subsidies and is laser-focused on sprinting – that’s what the best athletes do. There are similarly-obsessed tiny countries in other niche sports that succeed with a very small athlete base by capturing every possible participant and focusing what resources there are on it: think Fiji (population 900,000) in rugby; the Netherlands (population 18 million) in speed skating; the Dominican Republic (population 11 million) in baseball.
Catch lightning when it strikes: Success can also come in the wake of a single breakout star. This year Julian Alfred won St. Lucia’s first medal, a gold on the track for the women’s 100 meter sprint. That means the 80,000 women on that island now have tangible proof Olympic success is possible. Maybe they’ll start training harder, or the country will build better tracks or start providing subsidies for athletes. When Sylvia Poll won Costa Rica’s first medal in swimming in 1988, she became a national hero. People sent telegrams and faxes. The president called. She had a parade. “Success has a waterfall effect,” she said. “Once you get a triumph of that level, it has that collective pride that motivates people, but it also pushes them to practice sports and, in my case, there are now more pools and more people swimming.”
Maybe. But that doesn’t necessarily translate into Olympic success – other than Sylvia’s sister, there haven’t been any more Costa Rican medals in swimming -- or anything.
The reality may be a bit simpler. In Costa Rica and the other 2/3 of participating countries, the Olympics are a tiny, not especially relevant event, something other countries with more time on their hands or more money or more athletes can afford to obsess over.
Most of the world has other, more pressing, things to do in the middle of every fourth August. Work hard. Stay safe. Get cover from the sun. Feed family. If you have some extra time and there’s a break between the various soccer games, watch some Olympics.
Maybe that’s closer to the right perspective. If it’s not a matter of national pride, is there any higher meaning to this sprawling spectacle?
Bolivia’s Hector Baribay could be the one to break his country’s medal drought.
I don’t know. Now that I’m back home I’ve found it pretty easy to renew my obsession. The men’s team table tennis final and women’s kayak and pole vault have concluded, I’m getting excited about the men’s marathon. Hector Garibay from Bolivia (population 11 million) is running, and there’s a chance he’ll medal. That would be the country’s first ever, and might bring him enough fame to quit his day job — as a cab driver. Pass the popcorn.
-Leslie
Update: Hector Garibay’s Olympic dream did not work out as he had hoped. He finished 60th, about 9:30 behind the winner. If he’s run a personal best, he would have finished 7th. He’ll have to continue to train between shifts in his taxi.
Notes:
Al Michaels AI-generated daily Olympics summaries: https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/26/tech/al-michaels-ai-olympics/index.html
Gerald Drummond reflects on his success in the 400 hurdles: https://ticotimes.net/2024/08/06/costa-ricas-drummond-shines-secures-spot-in-olympic-semifinals
Brisa Hennessy’s surfing results: https://ticotimes.net/2024/08/05/costa-ricas-hennessy-narrowly-misses-podium-in-olympic-surfing
All-time Olympic medal counts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-time_Olympic_Games_medal_table
Success by underdog nations: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/03/world/olympics/country-without-medals.html
Norway’s investment in sports: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/05/world/olympics/norway-summer-winter-sports-track.html
Hector Garibay taxi driver, marathoner: https://bolivianthoughts.com/2022/07/25/hector-garibay-el-taxista-mas-veloz-de-toda-bolivia-the-fastest-taxi-driver-in-all-of-bolivia/