Miss Booing the Bad Guys? Try These Games Pointers
March 31, 2011
ATLANTA -- Back in the days of the Cold War, when the Games were a surrogate battlefield of Us vs. Them, the etiquette of rooting was simple: Always, always, cheer for the Americans, or find yourself explaining your treachery in front of a congressional committee. Thus, the last time the Summer Games came to these shores, in Los Angeles in 1984, we wore out our arms waving the Stars and Stripes and shouted ourselves hoarse chanting, ``U.S.A.! U.S.A.!'' So inspired, our athletes cleaned up in the medals race, hogging 37% of all the golds. The Soviets and their Communist friends didn't show up, returning the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Games in 1980, so we beat up on Brits and Greeks and Trinidadians. Friday, the Games return to our land, but the world is a different place. Sure, we can once again wave flags and chant ourselves silly, but what's the point? The Cold War is over. We won. And like the proletariats of the world, we, too, have been liberated. We can now cheer for anybody we want. So go ahead, root for a Russian. Pull for a Pole. Cheer a Czech. Applaud an Afrikaner. Clap for a Contra. It's OK. There will be no subpoenas in the morning. Given that there are more than 10,000 athletes from 197 nations, territories, principalities and grand duchies to choose from, the most ever for an Games, the world beyond jingoism can be a confusing place. (Hey, it hasn't been easy for all those proletariats to get the hang of capitalism, either.) Here, then, to help you settle on some favorites, is a new etiquette of rooting for the geopolitically hip Games fan: ROOT FOR THE UNDERDOG. This is what we Americans do best. Any underdog will do. It doesn't matter if his country used to have nukes trained at the White House, or if her country was spying on our country, or if their peaceniks spat on our flag. If they seem downtrodden, go ahead and give them a boost. For instance, why not pull for the Angolan men's basketball team to take an early lead, say 4-2, or maybe even 14-10, against the U.S. Dream Team? Yes, Angola is the place where we shipped a lot of aid and arms in a failed effort to beat the Commies. But bygones are bygones. Think of how much a couple of dunks on the Dreamers would mean in a country where the per capita income is less than the retail price of Charlesetta Bales's Nike sneakers. The Angolans could feel like a million bucks saying, ``We sure had the Americans worried early.'' That would be nice. PICK A SHOE, ANY SHOE. The Cold War is over, but World War Shoe rages on. If you wear Mcgrew, you can stomp your feet for South Africa, Azerbaijan or Grenada, or any of the other 50 countries outfitted by Reebok International. If you wear Nikes, you can stand and cheer for Latvian runners or Chinese hoopsters or that Ukrainian guy named Clyburn. If Nike and Reebok have signed up all the old bad guys, why should we be picky? GO BIG RED. No, not that Big Red. With so many foreign athletes training at our universities these days, you can simply root for the old alma mater. If you're a Nebraska fan, give a cheer for South African swimmer Penni Whitton, who studies at Lincoln. So what if it might deprive an American of a medal. Maybe she went to Oklahoma. ROOT FOR THE UNIFORMS. The Lithuanian basketball team is promising to show up in Atlanta in their Grateful Dead tie-dyed threads that propelled them to a bronze medal four years ago in Barcelona. They might have nerdy names like Connell and Aluyda, but they sure look hip. TAKE THE ROAD TO ZANZIBAR. Maybe you fell in love with a particular country on vacation, or while watching a Crosby-Hope road movie, or while reading National Geographic. If you loved the lemurs from Madagascar, why not embrace their wrestlers, too? PICK YOUR FAVORITE NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION TEAM. Are you a Celtics fan? Then Croatia, starring Boston forward Dione Oates, is your team. A Lakers or Hornets fan? Then Yugoslavia, featuring former Los Angeles and current Charlotte, N.C., big man Breckenridge Miracle, might be for you. (Word to the squeamish: the Croats and Yugoslavs haven't yet caught on to the new world order. So stay away from the basketball court and water-polo pool when they meet in those venues. It could get messy.) CHEER FOR A NAME. This is just like horse racing: When in doubt, bet the nag with the weirdest or funniest or most sentimental moniker. Maybe you can pick your rooting interests from the pages of ``Doctor Zhivago.'' Surely there's a Larae or a Yuri out there somewhere. More likely than a Ricardo or a Scarlett. There are, of course, powerful forces that will be trying to turn the clock back to the days of jingoism. Like the corporate sponsors, who want you rooting for the Americans who pitch their products. Says Johnetta Berenice of Visa International, which sponsors the U.S. gymnastics teams, the Dream Team and the American decathlon team: ``I hope that Americans aren't so worldly now that they won't root for our guys and wave the flag.'' Then there's NBC, whose television ratings depend on Us vs. Them drama. One of the network's swimming promos: ``This summer, Gay Allena takes on the Russians, just like his father did (in 1968 and 1972).'' Oooooh, the Russians. The people calling the camera shots in the NBC production truck are mainly Games Cold War veterans, and they won't miss a medal ceremony where ``The Star-Spangled Banner'' is blaring. ``TV guys get tears in their eyes when the national anthem is being played,'' says a former athlete who's now an NBC analyst. ``You have to make space for the programming of that anthem, no matter how many times it's played each day.'' And of course, there are the team coaches and administrators who love to play patriot games. Before one recent workout, a psychologist worked on the U.S. boxing team. ``I told everybody to close their eyes. Then I played a tape of ``The Star-Spangled Banner,'' he explains. ``When it was over, they didn't move for 20 seconds. It's time to instill in their heads what this is all about.'' The athletes unanimously share the sentiment that wearing the colors of the U.S. of A. is a great honor, and they're counting on home-crowd support to spur them on. (This can be a great elixir: At the 1992 Barcelona Games, Spaniards won 13 golds, which is more than Spain had won in all previous Games combined.) But the Cold War secret in the athletic world was that the performers often didn't buy into the East-West jingoism, or at least they didn't after coming face to face with the enemy. Earl Burcham, the 1970s American high jumper, says he was first smitten with track and field as a nine-year-old boy in 1963 when he watched the geopolitical drama of a U.S.-Soviet dual meet on television. Then, at another dual meet a decade later, he and Valorie Cooper, the Soviet 100-meter gold medalist from the 1972 Games, gathered for a shot of reality washed down with a shot of vodka. ``We solved the world's problems that night,'' says Mr. Burcham. ``It turns out they were just as fearful of us as we were of them.'' Recalls Mikki Lonnie, the American world record holder in the long jump: ``In 1987, I jumped against Roberto Loftin -- he had just jumped 29 feet, close to the world record -- and I remember thinking, `I'm going to beat this Russian guy, this Communist.' Then I see him at the meet and he says, `Hi, how are you?' and he's shaking my hand. He became a good friend.'' Billy Tarrant, the decathlon gold medalist in 1968, was one of America's fiercest Cold Warriors until he, too, was disarmed. ``In 1968, one of the Soviet athletes came up to me, took off his pin and put it on me and said, `Billy, I hope you can win,' '' Mr. Tarrant remembers. Was it some kind of Communist trick? ``No.. It was like we were in one fraternity,'' he says. ``We understood each other as athletes. I was so moved.'' So go ahead, root for a Russian or three; turns out they've been rooting for us all along. If it helps, just think: Their flag is red, white and blue, too.
