American exceptionalism

It's that time of year again . . . the teams are chosen, the banners are out, the TiVos are set.  Yes, I'm talking olympics.  Which means it's time for the biannual complaints from Europeans about how Americans only show the sports where Americans are likely to take medals:

I thought I'd get this rant out of the way before the season hits. Watching the Olympics in the US is no fun, because the only thing you can watch is Americans winning. You'd think the U.S. is the only country ever winning from the coverage. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for Americans to win, but I'm happy for other people to win, too. In fact, in some ways it's much more interesting when you have a diversity of folks competing and this is portrayed clearly in the coverage. It gets boring fast when all you can hear is the U.S. national anthem.

Growing up in Hungary, I remember watching all sorts of sports competitions - and I don't just mean the Olympics - where people from all over were taking home the gold. Sure, Hungary is a small country (population 10 million, that's like Chicagoland having its own team) and its athletes are only going to win so many medals so you could argue that by definition coverage would have to feature other competitions as well. But actually, for a small country, Hungary ranks very high on the all-time medals list (whoa, I actually had no idea how high before writing this post) so it's not as though there aren't opportunities to feature its own. Also, TV could just show less of the event if there were not enough Hungarian nationals to feature. But that's not what happens as featuring one's own doesn't seem to be the point. I remember hearing plenty of other national anthems and seeing lots of different flags.

I don't want to deny that there is some element of national pride here.  But here's the thing:  there are a lot of people in America, and a huge amount of money supporting professional athletes.  That means that in most events that Americans enjoy watching, we have competitive teams.  There's something of a chicken and egg problem, of course, because of course sports that Americans aren't particularly good at will be dull and not attract wide audiences.  But mostly, the direction runs from the interest to the competence.  The largest European nation is less than a third of the size of America, and therefore will have competitive teams in fewer sports.

Moreover, it's not entirely true that we only watch events we win at--the marathon is widely broadcast, and Americans basically never win that (though some of the winners are American residents).  We also watch a lot of ski racing and luge during the winter olympics, even though Americans are generally outclassed by the Scandinavians and not infrequently by other European teams.

What you don't get is the elevation of obscure sports because someone might medal in them, which happens frequently in small countries.  That can be kind of enjoyable--I, for one, love watching Olympic curling.  But it's not really America's "fault" that it has medal contenders in most of the popular sports.

I do find American Olympics coverage annoying, because they spend too much time "humanizing" the athletes with sob stories.  Call me insensitive, but I don't watch runners because their puppy died tragically when they were fourteen.  I watch them because they can run fast, and that's beautiful.