Paris Olympics: Winners And Sore Losers – OpEd

Medals count and the response to Pan Zhanle’s world record breaking feat show how xenophobic nationalism and racism are part of the ugly Western face of the Olympics  

American sports fans are glorifying the US’s performance as another example of the ‘exceptionalism’ of their country. 

According to US media – NBC, ABC, FOX News, The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press and all of their domestic tv and print agencies including those catering to an international audience – the country has been topping the table on medals won since the beginning of the Games. This American table they publish is based on the total number of medals won.

However, the medal table of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) provides a different computation. According to the Paris Olympics website, the US has not ranked first since the Games started. As of 6 August, the US ranked second behind China, and not first as found in the table accessible to the US public. This official medal table provided by the IOC for information ranks nations by the number of gold medals.  See https://olympics.com/en/paris-2024/medals 

Except for the US, the IOC table of medals count is followed by the rest of the world when reporting on the Olympics – whether it be the Winter or Summer Olympics or the Paralympics. This table format is not only a convention. It is also an important part of the almost universal sports reporting for the world.  

Why the US has refused to conform to the IOC format – the organisation has the membership of 206 countries of the world – has generated little or no comment or opinion from sports journalists in the US. This is not surprising. However what is surprising and astonishing is that those in the non US Western media – usually nationalistic in their coverage of sporting events – have avoided criticising the US media and sport authorities for misleading readers with an American-centric tabulation that differs from the rest of the world. 

By doing so, they are pandering to the American ego and obsession to be first, no matter what. They are also doing their own country’s Olympics committees that seek to adhere to the “Olympic spirit of developing the values and ideals of Olympism in those who visit and to promote tolerance and understanding in these increasingly troubled times in which we live, [so as] to make our world a more peaceful place” a disservice.

Others in social media have not been so respectful or politically correct. Critics are upbraiding US media and sports officials for concealing a different reality and thus playing up to the US fear of losing and sense of insecurity. Generating spins showing the US to be on top of whatever is in the sporting world indicates how the US has weaponized sports against its rivals in geopolitics, notably Russia and China. Other comments indicate the boomerang and negative effect that this fixation with pushing the ideology that the US must be first however and whatever it takes has on discerning sports fans. 

It is noticeable that when US mainstream media report the medal count, the comments page is turned off so that fair minded American sports fans are unable to provide feedback, including from those who see the American table as illustrative of the emperor strutting around in his imaginary clothes. Cancelling critical feedback on this is found not only with US media outlets but also with the media of allied countries such as Australia. 

See eg the report on ABC News on “US media skews Olympic medal tally to look like winners” where the readers’ response button has been disabled 

Pan’s ‘Humanly Impossible’ Achievement

Meanwhile swimming fans from around the world have had their attention drawn to the world record breaking 100 metre freestyle win of China’s Pan Zhanle. Instead of headlining and acclaiming this extraordinary performance, Western media has downplayed or ignored it in their Olympic reporting. 

Worse, western media have played up the reaction of Australian Olympian-turned swimming coach Brett Hawke, now a US citizen, who questioned the legitimacy of Pan Zhanle’s stunning performance. In an angry Instagram video tirade, he ranted: 

“Listen, I’m just going to be honest. I am angry at that swim, I’m angry for a number of reasons,” .

“My friends are the fastest swimmers in history — from Rowdy Gaines to Alex Popov to Gary Hall Jr, Anthony Irvin, all the way up to King Kyle Chalmers.

“I know these people intimately, I’ve studied them for 30 years. I’ve studied this sport. I’ve studied speed. I understand it. I’m an expert in it, that’s what I do, okay,”.

“That’s not real, you don’t beat that field — Kyle Chalmers, David Popovici, Jack Alexy — you don’t beat those guys by one full body length in 100 freestyle. That’s not humanly possible, okay.”

What Hawke was insinuating without a shred of evidence was that Pan could not have achieved his swim without the assistance of drugs. 

Although western media has made little or no attempt to follow up on this possibly the most contentious claim made against a competitor in the current Games, others in social media  have rallied to denounce Hawke and rebut his accusation. Yet others have conducted a thorough examination of Pan’s swimming record as well as a forensic analysis of the actual swim to show that it was not only humanly possible but also to be expected since Pan had already done 5 of the 10 fastest clocked times for that event.

See

One social media fan in response to Hawke had this to comment

You need to train your athletes more rather than crying like a baby. Saying it’s not humanly possible just because he beat his own record by a millisecond? Athletes get faster and stronger every year, just look at the world records since the Olympics started. Chinese athletes get tested a lot more now than the others too. Stop the discrimination and accept the defeat.

Hawke has now taken down his video rant. But this has not been reported by most Western media. Pan, speaking on the drug issue, noted that he took 21 doping tests from May to July prior to the games. “I cooperated with all the testing procedures and stayed confident that I am competing fair and clean. I did a lot of aerobics and endurance training to strengthen my push and kick in the final split. We have also adopted a scientific underwater monitoring and analysing system to review our techniques and strokes, so that we can train better and more effectively.”

Pan may have been the most drug tested competitor in the Paris Olympics 

What this particular episode in the Paris Olympics is bringing to the forefront is the way in which xenophobic nationalism and racism  are driving the agenda of key stake players with western media centrally implicated.