Commentary: Embarrassed Over U.S. Athletes

Oct. 2, 2000 -- If I weren’t American, I could easily hate the United States right now for the way its athletes behaved at the Olympics.

It’s not just the jealousy the nation’s winning medal count inspires. That may be natural. Americans are, after all, the world’s richest people and live in its only superpower, the country with the go-go economy and companies that give zillion-dollar sponsorships.

But do its high-flying athletes have to shove it in everyone’s faces?

Something to Gloat AboutIf I weren’t American, I might be gloating over the fact that Marion Jones, the world’s “fastest woman,” didn’t win the five gold medals she told us over and over she was going to the Games to get, but “merely” three golds and two bronzes.

One of those bronze medals came in the long jump, for which she said she was “saving” herself when she slowed down as she won the 200-meter race — rather than giving a more admirable, all-out, Olympian effort.

I’d certainly be aghast that swimmer Amy Van Dyken not only spit in her opponent’s lane to psych her out, but that she later defended her actions and ungraciously implied she was beaten in the 50-meter freestyle because her Dutch opponent had taken drugs that gave her male characteristics.

Can anyone blame the Australian fans for boisterously rooting against an American basketball “dream team” that could barely eke out a win against the Lithuanians in the men’s semifinals?

Thank goodness there’s actual competition in that sport again, even if we had to watch the gold-medal-winning Americans preen and take each others’ photos while their national anthem played.

Wrapped in the FlagAnd what are we to make of the way the 4 x 100-meter relay team pranced in front of the cameras while holding American flags after one of its members taunted competitors to try to beat them?

“To have to hear the rest of the world, including Americans, some of whom are much more old-fashioned than I am, criticize their accomplishments, it took away from them,” said Craig Reichenback, 41, general manger of the Playoffs Sports Grill, a Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., bar whose customers echoed his remarks.

“I think they worked hard in achieving the gold, and I respect them and have the utmost admiration for them,” he said. “I just wish, personally, that they would have perhaps stood with their hands over their hearts in a more traditional manner.”

Drugs in Question, TooEven U.S. officials seemed overly secretive about how they were investigating alleged misdeeds.

It is no honor for Americans to have to defend against accusations that USA Track and Field was not forthcoming about which athletes may have taken banned drugs or engaged in doping.

If Americans are going to call the International Olympic Committee to task in Salt Lake City courts for its alleged corruption, we had better make sure our conduct is beyond reproach on the fields, floors and mats of competition.

The real U.S. triumphs of these Games came from American wrestler Rulon Gardner, who beat the formerly indomitable Russian Alexander Karelin — then gave awe-shucks, awestruck remarks. And the U.S. baseball players — true amateurs, at last — who beat the seemingly stronger Cubans.

The spirit of the Olympics is supposed to be honest, open competition, and admiration for fellow athletes, not taunting dominance, trash-talking and possibly rule-breaking behavior of an 800-pound gorilla who doesn’t care what others think because he’s so strong.

“A lot of our athletes are very boisterous on the professional level, and I think it carries over to the amateur level, too,” says Michael Hogan, manager of the Grand Slam Sports Bar in Washington, D.C. “Everyone wants their moment in the sun.”

Maybe so. But what cuts it in the commercial big-time of American sports doesn’t look so good in a more diverse international venue.

Winning honestly, even modestly, is something anyone can admire. Taunting dominance only raises others’ ire.