Thread by @gauravsabnis

Reminder that the American government does NOT have a sports ministry or any real budget to actively promote sports. These #Olympics medals are all because of student athletes who give it their best knowing 99.99% will never make any real money even if they win a gold.

The biggest untold story of the Olympics is how America is so good at it when almost every other government is actively trying to bring medals home. It's only because of the people and the high schools and universities and parents.

American professional athletes (NBA,NFL,MLB,NHL,MLS etc) have a decent chance of making a good living from dedicating their life to their sport. American Olympians do not! They often struggle to make a living. No one is offering an American Olympic medal winner free pizza.

I grew up in a country that has a billion people but that did not win a single Olympic medal in my life until I was 16 years old and even that was (no offense to Leander), in tennis. Not an OG Olympic athletic event. But an event meant to make Olympics popular IYKWIM.

America wins SO MANY MEDALS!
SO!
MANY!
MEDALS!!

I can name every Indian medalist ever. Because we had so few.

America has so many medals all the time that except for very very few, thanks to endorsements, make any money at all from dedicating their childhood to one.

Btw I only started realizing all this recently, because many of my student advisees are also student athletes and they talk to me about this. What a thankless thing it is overall to be an American Olympian. All most of them get out of it is a college scholarship. If that.

A competitive swimmer student told me "I was 12 years old when Katie beat me and I realized that no matter how hard I try and no matter what I do, I will never ever win a gold medal in the Olympics. It's kinda hard to swallow that as a 12 year old, you know?"

😳😳

So yeah, my point is that we are all so used to America winning so many medals in all Olympics that we just take it as a given. But the US govt spends $700 billion on the military and practically $0 on Olympians.

A student of mine in fact messaged me after seeing some of my tweets agreeing with @joybhattacharj about the cynical free pizza thing for chanu saikhom mirabai that "lol the hut would never offer free pizza for life to American medalists cos it would be so bad for business."

Imagine living in a country where your winning an Olympic medal is not really that newsworthy beyond your hometown unless you achieve Phelps, Biles, Ledecky level success. And even those 3 are not assured of a living beyond sponsorship deals.

I know the world generally likes to root against America because it's usually the Goliath, but in the Olympics, rooting for America is cool because the average American Olympian will get less attention or money than an insta influencer. Think about that!

This is an excellent article from Indian athlete and researcher @AditiMutatkar exploring how US sports is so ridiculously successful at churning out medalists without any real governmental involvement or money. It's a breathtaking system really!

https://twitter.com/arjunsankalia/status/1420190314543730695?s=19

It's hard to fully explain to outsiders and especially fellow Indians how deeply crazy America is as a nation and culture about sports. Their college sports league makes a BILLION dollars every year. No other country even comes remotely close. College sports. BILLION dollars.

College sports is such a huge deal in the US that one of the biggest landmark judgments of the Supreme Effing Court of the United Effing States this term was about college sports! And it was unanimous! This very bitterly divided court unanimous!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_…

When I came to Penn State for my PhD, I was astounded that a tiny remote college town of just 40K people regularly sold out a stadium with the capacity of a 100K every year for what my desi mind first thought was just "inter college sports". That's like Eden Gardens!

And then I learned that Penn State was not unique in this. There were dozens of universities that regularly sold out crowds bigger than Eden Gardens! And many of the fans have never attended said university!! That really made me do a double take!

People stan universities that they have never attended nor their kids. That's some crazy level of sports love, right? So these behemoth universities exist because of how much we Americans are into sports. And they have a lot of money. And great facilities. Ergo, medals.

Most of the rest of the world will be astonished at how little a role the richest and biggest government in the world plays in sports in the United States. It's all people and clubs and schools and universities and just this extra crazy sports culture.

Australia is similar btw. Crazy crazy crazy about sports. Why they punch way above their weight population wise.

A friend of mine said it best after we attended our first college football game at Penn State - "yaar idhar matlab har weekend Jo jeeta wohi sikander sach mein HOTA hai! 😳"

I remember this article in the New Yorker about pandemic life where the dude is like, I went for a run and there were these young girls running and they were running really fast and I said wow, you are fast and they were like lol we are training for the Olympics but lockdown.

As I often love to tell people, if you've really lived in America, you know that #ParksAndRec the TV show was not at all some utopian Blandings like fantasy. America is great because there are literally thousands of Leslie Knopes working hard in really. Parks are America. 😍

Btw just to give you a fuller picture and not just gushing about Murrca sports, there are those who argue, justifiably, that perhaps we care TOO much for sports. To the detriment of the kids.

newyorker.com/news/daily-com…

I live 2 minutes from an Olympic level track owned and operated by the city and can use it for free. Or an Olympic level pool or tennis court for a very small fee. But our subways are creaking and our roads piled with trash bags. So yeah.

I have a desi friend who flunked out of US grad school for a reason you'll rarely hear in desi circles. It wasn't booze or drugs that threw him off. He just could not believe the kinds of world class sports facilities he was getting for free and spent too much time in them.

He was "addicted" lol to swimming laps and working out and playing tennis and racketball and anything and everything. He binged on sports and flunked out. He has no regrets though. He ended up starting a gym and is doing very well.

A lot of people are responding to this thread thinking I'm recommending something or criticizing something and I'm not. I'm just talking about the very complex and fascinating nature of American sports. In acad terms, this thread is descriptive not prescriptive.

This government has spent trillions on wars and got their ass handed to them by Vietnam and Afghanistan and spend barely anything as a government or even thinks about sports as a government and yet America has topped a big majority of Olympic tables. That's so American!

Again, this is not to say that American government does not invest in sports. It does. Perhaps a bit too much. But there is no Secretary of Sports running things. It's all just diffused and decentralized and yet so organized. It's amazing for an Asian immigrant to see.

Great initiative. Not a "lead" as such, but one thing I learn from watching the NBC feed that is not mentioned in other feeds is how many non-American Olympians attend American universities on athletic scholarships. Hardly any applicants from India.

https://twitter.com/KalyaniRudresh/status/1420425468738633728?s=19

Engineering and business schools, we get so many applications from India and China. Very very few saying "hey I'm an athlete who could play in the NCAA". Some do. But there could be more. Like actually play in the Ivy League, not just attend it.

Okay, again, I'm NOT saying that the US does not spend taxpayer money on sports. Of course it does. A lot!! I'm saying there is no one doing it with "let's keep America number 1" attitude. This country just invests a lot in sports. And that's why it dominates so many. Simple.

Why are people reading any criticism of India in this thread, I have no idea. America is literally 50 times richer than India. Obviously they are very different countries with very different resources and histories.
I'm just sharing a relatively little known side of US sports.

Wish there were an Olympic event in udta teer pakadna cos indians would sweep it. 😂

I mean it is literally a fact that I went the first 16 years of my life not seeing my country win a single Olympic medal. That is not a criticism of India. It is just context for why I as an Indian immigrant am so fascinated by America, a country where no one can name 5 medalists

They win so many medals that they could have just won a gold and then go completely unrecognized when flying into JFK unless they are Ledecky or Biles level. That is some first world problem!

And the thing is, I make my living teaching kids who are also student athletes. Which, because we aren't a Division 1 program, is usually kids who are very good at the sport but have spent their lives dedicated to a sport that they won't win a medal at cos genetic lottery.

The do it for the sheer love of the sport. And of course they get a good college degree out of it. But it's crazy what the average level of fitness and sportiness is in rich countries like US and Australia.

Remember that the Olympics are actually not very high in avg TV ratings in US sports broadcasts. They are good of course. But we are not talking a cash cow like NFL or NBA or MLB playoffs. A marquee SNF game gets NBC more viewers than America dominating swimming or gymnastics.

Arre baba yes I'm sure Germany and Holland and UK are also similarly sports crazy but I only have first hand knowledge in India and America and a little bit Australia no? This is my thread, not yours. You want to extol Germany, write your own thread. 😂

And yes "on a per capita basis many Caribbean nations outperform the United States in sports" but when did I ever suggest otherwise? I've been to half a dozen of them and always written long gushing threads about what amazing people they are. Kaayko faaltu editorial?

I drove the length (10 km) and breadth (15 km) of Antigua which basically looks like a Tier 3 Indian town infrastructure wise thinking how the hell this tiny place give us Viv Richards and Andy Roberts and Curtley Ambrose. 😳
Don't you teach me about the Caribbean.

Yaar American sports ki thodi bi taareef karo, kitne bhi caveat daal do, koi Desi "I have the entire Sportstar collection and world series is not world series" uncle ukhad jaata hai. 😂😂

Sir, yes,
- World Series is just USA plus Toronto.
- Super bowl "world champions" are just America champions
- American football is largely played with hands
- Americans call regular football as soccer

Matlab none of this breaking news. Kitna pakaoge.