AP recently put out a story detailing the seeming phenomena of Mexican athletes winning medals in the Pan-Am games immediately becoming national stars. Seemingly, this is because the games are being hosted in Mexico, and that is definitely a huge part of it, but it’s not the only one.
As a Mexican, I’ve grown up accustomed to following the strangest sports in which Mexicans have the rare opportunity of winning, dominating. There’s a reason the LPGA was huge in Mexico during the time of Lorena Ochoa’s reign as the top women’s golfer in the world. There’s a reason we got up in the morning to watch the 20-km walk, a reason we know the difficulty level of a 3.5. Backwards dive (3.8).
The US on the other hand has three of the top five professional sports leagues in the world (MLB, NFL, NBA, La Liga, Premiere League as final two), dominates/is highly competitive in practically every team sport except rugby and cricket.
They don’t need to find heroes; rather they try and weed through them, to see which one is really worth ‘hero’ status. There are gymnasts, American gymnasts that have not lost competitions in 5 years and the US couldn’t care less.
I can name at least ten Mexican medalists out of the 33 they had in the Pan-Am games when I started writing this. I can name two Americans off the top of my head Shawn Johnson (because I remembered her from 2008) and Elisabeth Best (because my boss made a quip about her being the ‘Best’).
Point is, with approximately two days left in competition (and despite almost being entirely absent from medal races in track) the US has twice as many gold medals as the next opponent (81-40) and twice as many medals (201, 102), yet aside from followers of niche sports like handball and water polo. Who cares?
“Yes, we won. We should win against those damned third world countries also taking up space in the Americas.”
It’s not about the US necessarily thinking it is better, or having it validated on the medal count, its actual pragmatism. For writers not dedicating themselves to the Pan-Am Games, and even those that are, do you have the time to profile all 202 winners?
Half of those? One tenth of those? Instead there’s bland score recaps, listing of winners. And no one in their right mind will be enthralled by that.
Does the national media focused on the World Series, football, and an NBA lockout care that the US now holds practically every title in shooting?
The US sent a mix of future stars and has beens to the games and dominated against some of the best athletes in the Americas. But the expectation of success, and the subsequent apathy towards it, seems to have erased the narrative from the national minds.
