The Olympics: American Underdoggery at its Finest

I love the Winter Olympics.

You think you know why.  Yes, the greatest sports moment in the history of the universe plays a role, but it’s more than that.  Simply put, the Winter Olympics is the only real sports venue outside the World Cup (and, really, who cares about soccer?) where the United States is a perennial underdog.  Just look at the historical medal counts.  Norway crushes us, and only about nine people live there.  Germany and Russia make us look like we’ve never seen a pair of skis, and even tiny little places like Austria are right up there with the World’s Lone Superpower™.  And this is with a total medal count inflated in recent years by the inclusion of all the “X-Game” sports designed to give bored American teenagers a reason to watch the same show their grandparents are watching.  Knock out the “extreme sports,” and Latvia would give us a run for our money.

Think back with me to the Eighties and Nineties, the good old days of American winter underdoggery.  Every four years, we’d be treated to the heroic tale of a farm boy or girl who milked the cows in Frozen Pumpkin Lake, Minnesota, went to the local community college, and then spent their lonely evenings skating with homemade skates on frozen ponds . . . longing for that one, shining moment when they could challenge a Swiss “national hero” or a bearded East German woman on the grandest stage in sports.  Is it coming back to you now?  Do you remember the bobsled runs with gigantic Soviets and their high-tech, government-financed sled holding down the top two slots, with the Americans in 41st place and trying gamely for a personal best in their hand-me-down, wooden sled?  Or do you remember sports like the “biathlon” or somesuch, where you actually get to ski and spray a target with an AK-47?  I seem to recall the Scandinavians absolutely dominating that sport.  A collection of Finns and Swedes would ski to bloody victory, followed two hours later by a middle-aged American dude with a bulging belly and hand-me down bolt action deer rifle.  Heck, in the ski jump, the primary qualification for inclusion on the American team seemed to be a reckless desire to top the famous crash from ABC’s Wide World of Sports. 

Then there was figure skating.  Not only was this non-sport (it should be called “ice ballet,” and it’s a competition, not a sport) the most popular part of the games, but this is the one area where we always had a chance.   But who stood in our way?  None other than the Soviet bloc of ice ballet terminators.  Katerina Witt, Oksana Baiul, and other grim communists destroyed our poor, innocent American girls with ruthless efficiency.  They so thoroughly trashed our morale that some of our gals cracked and actually hired rednecks to club their rivals.  

Heck, even when we hosted the Olympics we had to overcome obstacles.  The Salt Lake City Olympics almost collapsed in scandal and debt until rescued at the last moment by a North Dakota farmboy with a pair of rusty skates slung over his shoulder.  (Wait, that’s not what happened?  The Olympics were rescued by a Boston business tycoon?  Don’t kill my narrative buzz!)

American underdogs.  That’s what we’ll always be when the snow hits the ground — regardless of how many mogul and half-pipe golds we bring home.  Yes, we now have advanced bobsleds that cost more than the Joint Strike Fighter.  No, there are no more grim communists to root against.  And we may win more medals than anyone else this time around, but it’ll be because one of our blue collar athletes from one of our frozen upper Midwest tundras beat a “national hero.”  

At least that’s what I’ll tell myself.  Because my only other American underdog option is that darn World Cup.  But that would mean watching soccer, and no one wants that.