Last Sunday night, the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, ended just as quickly as they began. This global event that celebrates the greatest athletes in the world from all kinds of sports sent its competitors home for another three years and 50 weeks. However, unlike professional sports stars in the United States, the olympic athletes will return to modest salaries, second jobs and relative obscurity.
One of the best parts of the Winter Olympics is that they give ordinary people the chance to show off their extraordinary skills on a global stage. Athletes in sports such as cross-country skiing, luge and curling do not get the fame or fortune of their commercialized counterparts. Every four years though, a sales associate from Wisconsin or a paralegal from Vermont can find themselves on hundreds of millions of TVs showing off a skill that took a lifetime to master.
The U.S. curling team is a glaring example of unremarkable underdogs rising to the top when given the opportunity. Curling is not usually a sport the U.S. excels in. They have only medaled once, earning bronze in 2006. The team’s skip, or captain, John Shuster, is a self-described stay-at-home dad who also works part time at Dick’s Sporting Goods. He was practically cut by U.S. curling after repeated Olympic failures until he built his own team. Shuster rounded his team out with Tyler George, a general manager of a liquor store, Matt Hamilton, a research and development technician, and John Landsteiner, a corrosion engineer.
With their combined 65 years in curling, Team Shuster got hot at the right time and won gold in Pyeongchang, taking down traditional powers in the sport. They were able to get Americans excited about a sport they know nothing about. The humbly paid athletes might have even earned themselves a few endorsement deals. After years in the shadows, Shuster and his team finally got their time on center stage.
One Olympic sport that usually never finds itself in the shadows is men’s ice hockey. Its popularity is typically due to the participation of professional players. However, the NHL decided to not allow their athletes to play in the Olympics this year. This hurt the excitement surrounding the men’s hockey tournament and allowed other sports to capitalize on this. The U.S. women’s ice hockey team did just that.
The women’s team usually finds themselves in the men’s shadow, not being able to compete with the star power they have. Not only do they have to handle the lower popularity, but they have to deal with the lower pay. Many Olympic team members, like captain Meghan Duggan, also play in the little-known National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL), though they only earn between $5,000 and $7,000 a year.
Like the curling team, the women’s ice hockey team was able to exceed expectations in 2018. Even though they are considered a world power, second only to Canada, the team had not won Olympic gold since 1998. Canada has shown utter domination over any challenger this century. The Canadian women have won every gold medal since the Salt Lake City games in 2002. The United States won the gold medal game in overtime, walking away from these games on top after years of being underappreciated and coming up short.
Athletes like Shuster and Duggan will return home to the U.S. to more fanfare than they are used to. Soon that will die down, and they will fall back into their usual routine. Shuster will resume his duties as stay-at-home dad, and Duggan will take her place on the NWHL’s Boston Pride. They will always be gold medalists and can hopefully be appreciated more than every four years.
Photo provided by Pixabay
