Read the opposing arguments from Bleacher Fan.
Is it even a question that the Olympic Summer Games are far superior to their fledgling counterpart, the Winter Games? Seriously, the Summer Games have a history steeped in tradition that goes back thousands of years to the ancient Greeks around 776 BC. The Winter Games are less than 100 years old. The Summer Games feature hundreds of sports and thousands of competitors. The Winter Games feature fewer. The Summer Games have a global appeal. The Winter Games are regional and somewhat of a novelty act. The Summer Games boast some of the most intense and masculine competitions of athletic prowess ever imagined. The Winter Games… not so much. The Summer Olympic Games are the genuine article in comparison to the Winter Games’ cheap knockoff. The Summer Games are bigger and better in every way.
Not convinced? Imagine you are at one of the first Olympic Games in ancient Greece. You can keep it rated G by imagining it before all the nude competition stuff started with the Spartans (which for the record, is freaky-deaky). Now imagine you are listening to the play-by-play calls of an ancient sports commentator. What do you think you would hear? Would it sound something like this?
“And Cleisthenes makes a flawless transition from the double axel into a perfect triple toe loop.”
Probably not. But if I were to say, “Alexandros slams Demetrios to the ground and grapples him into submission” you might be more inclined to admit that sounds appropriate. Why? Because the Olympic Games have an ancient history… that is not tied to Winter sports.
The ancient Olympic competition included the following: horse and chariot racing, wrestling, and running, among others. Each event was found throughout the ancient world, which could be practiced throughout the empire. The modern Olympic Games, date back to the turn of the 20th Century and featured some of the same lineup as the ancient games. While the contests have increased exponentially in number, they have been true to the game’s roots, an athletic competition in which any athlete can engage. The same can not be said of the Winter Games.
The Winter Olympic Games cater to specific countries, those with snowy regions or the ability to practice in those places. Every now and then, a country or athlete gains global attention as an exception to this norm, like the now world famous Jamaican bobsled team or this year’s skier from Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah-Achempong – the Snow Leopard. Unfortunately the performance of these novelty acts is usually substandard. The Summer Olympic Games, however, focus on sports that are as widely practiced as they are ancient in nature. There is nothing elitist or segregated about the Summer Games. For the most part they can be practiced anywhere there is an athlete and a field. The Summer Games are truly a competition for the world, and the numbers reflect it.
More than 11,000 athletes competed in more than 300 events across 28 sports during the last Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China. This year’s Winter Games feature just 5,000 athletes, less than half the number of participants in the Summer Games. The Beijing games had almost 4 billion viewers during the opening ceremonies. While the Vancouver Games – which are shaping up to be one of the most watched Winter Games in Olympic history – had just a 67.5 million viewer audience for the opening ceremonies. The numbers do not lie. The Winter Olympics just cannot compete.
Now I have proven that the Summer Games are better because of their history, appeal, and in sheer numbers of participants and spectators. All these arguments are strong, intellectual, and probably appeal to data driven fans like Sports Geek. But I want to make sure everyone is on board in acknowledging the Summer Games as supreme, so I am going to do what I do best – get Ruthless.
The Summer Games are the biggest compilation of the most awesome sports on the planet. The Winter Games, however, carry about as much machismo as a tickle fight. The Summer Olympics feature sports that comprise many of the individual aspects of modern MMA (i.e. wrestling, boxing, judo, and taekwondo), while the Winter Games feature competitions like curling (seriously… how is that an Olympic Sport and baseball isn’t!?). In 1996 Kurt Angle, Olympic wrestler turned professional wrestler, won the gold with a broken neck. Curling is so gentle one of the Canadian team’s backups is able to do it despite being five months pregnant.
The Summer Olympics boasted unadulterated competitions of manliness, like weightlifting, shooting, and archery. The Winter Olympics feature competitive ice dancing. And yes, the Winter Games have a couple of manly sports, like hockey and the biathlon, (a combination of cross country skiing and marksmanship), but do those make up for the male figure skating costumes? I don’t think so! Even the Americans have lost their minds when it comes to figure skating costumes. American figure skater Johnny Weir wore pink tassels in something that looks like it came out of a Fredricks of Hollywood catalog. I do not know about you, but I do not think that is what the ancient Greeks had in mind. Sure these guys are proudly representing our country, but that sort of stuff just does not have the same mass appeal as watching the American NBA all-stars rip up the boards against defenseless third world countries during the Summer Games. To me, even the gymnastics competitions of the Summer Olympics have more appeal.
There is no doubt the Summer Games are the better than the Winter Games in every measurable way.
According to your logic then you would argue that MLB is better then the NFL since it has a longer history. Or that the Harvard-Yale football game is the best college football rivalry game since it has been played longer then any other. Just because we americans do not have a passion for curling doesn’t mean it’s not a great game, we have never been big soccer fans but the rest of the world says soccer is number 1. Sounds to me like the US is just showing some arrogance when it comes to these sports since they are sports that we do not dominate. If we are bad at a sport then it must not really count since we are great at all real games, sounds a little childish to me to have that kind of attitude. I believe the winter games are best if for only 1 reason; They gave us the greatest sports upset in history. The Miracle on Ice alone makes the winter games superior. There is nothing better then being the underdog and defeating the big bad giants. In the summer games we are the giants. I’ll take being the underdog and having the opprotunity to upset someone else rather then expect to dominate a sport. Americans love to route and rally around the little guy, the winter games give us the opportunity to be the little guy and demonstrate that true American spirit.
WHOA! NO mercy from the Babe!
Here’s the deal – I completely agree that there is a great amount of sentimentality associated with being the “underdog”, and the American culture very much wants to see the underdog win. It’s why movies like Rocky, Rudy, and Hoosiers are so popular. I don’t necessarily agree, though, that the average American would PREFER to be the underdog.
Part of what makes the Olympics (either Winter OR Summer) so much fun to watch is the fact that the US often gets to prove dominance over other nations. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? To hear your anthem played instead of Finland’s, or China’s or even Canada’s?! It fuels American pride, which is something that we could all use right now! If the US were perpetually the underdog, that dominance (and subsequent pride) would be hard to claim.
That having been said, there is definitely something special about a surprise victory when no one expected it. The Miracle on Ice is just one example. Another is the mens 4×100 Medley swimming relay during the Beijing Olympics. During buildup to that event, the French team had done a LOT of trash-talking, but the US managed to steal Gold from the French in very dramatic fashion. I can remember standing in front of my television, literally screaming encouragement to the American swimmers (like they could hear me) as they pushed for that underdog gold. I would be lying if I said that wasn’t my favorite moment from the Summer Olympics, and much of that is due to the underdog nature of how it all played out.
To the point about history serving as validation for a better product, I completely agree that the two are unrelated. History may add to the nostalgia of the game, and it may be a big part of the product, but it does not necessarily mean the product is better today. Boxing (for example) has a tremendous history that is literally thousands of years old. However, there are many people who would argue that Mixed Martial Arts fighting offers a better product today.
Finally, the Miracle on Ice is probably the single greatest moment in US Olympic History. The Summer Olympics cannot provide a memory that comes even remotely close to matching it. When you consider the context surrounding that game, combined with the fact that those same two teams played just prior to the Olympics, resulting in an EMBARRASSING lost by the American Team. I don’t know whether or not that single moment automatically qualifies the Winter as being better than the Summer games, but in terms of “greatest moments”, that one is undeniably the KING!!!
Keep the comments coming! We LOVE to see Babe Ruthless get all riled up!
Chris,
For someone who follows TSD somewhat regularly (as evidenced by the fact that this is the 2nd time you’ve commented on an article in little more than a month) you seem to be completely ignorant about more than just a few things.
For starters, Babe Ruthless love tradition in sports. In fact, that is part of why I am so obsessed with baseball. The game is steeped in rich traditions, legacies, and dynasties. What’s not to like about that? But you mistakenly over-generalize my support of sports with history to assert that it is the only thing that matters, which is a fallacy (Chris, that’s a big word that means something that’s not true.)
As for your anti-America tirade, you will find no agreement or support here. Implying that Americans (which is spelled with a capital A, for those who love this country) display “arrogance” and “childish” behavior by not supporting sports like curling is ludicrous, at best. The game does not have mass appeal in America. The same can be said for soccer. Contrary to your incorrect assertion that it is not a sport we dominate, the women’s national team has won two world cups and three Olympic gold medals since 1991, and Americans still do not generally like the sport. Despite the efforts of the MLS which has tried to jump start American interest in the game by bringing in international stars like David Beckham, still… no one cares. To attack Americans for their apathy for certain sports is both absurd and unpatriotic. I have worked very hard to portray myself as one of the most patriotic writers here at TSD, so you will get no sympathy from Babe Ruthless. If you want to hate on America please go do it on another site, and you can emigrate to Iran while you are at it.
Last, your rant about how it’s “American” to root for the underdog could not be further from the truth. In general it’s the goliath teams in the U.S. that have some of the biggest fan bases. You can arbitrarily dismiss it as a bandwagon following, but I think its more. Americans like to win, therefore Americans pull for winners. It has been my experience that if you go to any professional baseball game, there is usually a sea of Yankees and Red Sox apparel regardless of which teams are being represented on the field. The same can be said of the perennial football contenders, like the Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys. Why? Because many Americans like to root for the big guy, because the big guy often wins. You admitted it yourself, “we [Americans] are the giants” so why would we root against ourselves? If you want to pull for the “loveable” underdogs – like Kansas City Royals, Detroit Lions, and New Jersey Nets – the, go ahead, but don’t delude yourself that it is any more American to do so. It is loser talk plain and simple.
I’m going to be brutally honest with you, because that’s just how I roll. It seems to me you are the one who doesn’t know what they are talking about and you probably need to leave the sports commentary to the big boys.
Babe Ruthless
As always Chris, we appreciate the comments.
I myself am a sucker for the underdog sometimes. The little guy deserves a shot in the spotlight sometimes too. While I’m not really big on Cinderella stories in March Madness (George Mason comes to mind), I do get a kick out of Tampa Bay making it to the World Series while the Yankees and Red Sox are sitting in their recliners.
As for as rooting for the Americans during the Olympics or any other team competition, hopefully, as Americans, that should be who we are. We should be proud to be Americans. It’s why we root for Americans over the French or over the Russians in the Olympics. It’s why we root for USA over Europe in the Ryder Cup. It’s why we root for USA in the World Baseball Classic.
I’ll agree with what Babe said about the “giants” having the biggest fan bases. I can attest that the fact that you can go to an MLB game anywhere in the country and if the Yankees are playing, you’ll see Yankee fans. But those same teams also have the most enemies as well.
Here is where you are wrong about the giants, as many fans as the Yankees, Cowbaoys and Notre Dame have, there are more people who love to see them lose. Everyone not a Yankee fan enjoyed watching them lose in the past.