The World’s Best Athletes? Not Here

I’m sitting at the Olympic ice dancing original program Sunday night because I’m all about the prescribed Latin combination now. You know: the cha cha, the mambo, the salsa, the rumba, the samba.

This will not be a screed on why ice dancing belongs in Las Vegas rather than Turin. When you’re watching Russia’s Jana Khokhlova compete in a skimpy, tattered, Day-Glo orange outfit with one leg wrapped suggestively around partner Sergei Novitski’s waist, you figure you’re at least halfway to a decent argument that this isn’t U.S.-Canada men’s hockey.

But I think we need to ask ourselves a question when we’re talking about what the Winter Games really mean: If the pool of people who participate in some of these sports is as deep as a puddle of water, do those sports really count?

There might be 200 Americans who seriously compete in the skeleton, and I think I’m being wildly liberal with that estimate. How many people bobsled? How many compete in the luge? How many ice-dance and admit it?

Just before the Olympics began, Bryant Gumbel started a small fire on HBO’s “Real Sports” when he introduced race into the discussion.

“Laugh when somebody says these are the world’s greatest athletes, despite the paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention ... “ he said. “So if only to hasten the arrival of the day they’re done and we can move on to March Madness, for God’s sake, let the Games begin.”

He’s right in the sense that you wonder how many potential Shani Davises there are who are dreaming impossible NBA dreams as the sixth man on high school basketball teams. Davis won speedskating gold in the 1,000 meters Saturday night, becoming the first black athlete to win an individual gold medal at a Winter Olympics.

But this isn’t a black-white issue. This is a numbers issue.

“That’s one of the things the USOC is working very hard on,” Anita DeFrantz, a U.S. Olympic Committee board member, said. “The national governing boards have to understand that there are people who will take part, but [officials] have to get their act together. There are some very good NGBs doing a great job. And then there are others who have continued to be just sort of local.

“It’s time to open to a broader range of people.”

I remember having a conversation with the Swedish team-handball coach at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Team handball has elements of soccer and basketball to it, with a baseball throwing motion tossed in. Its existence is mostly a rumor in the United States. And I said something to the effect of, “Just to be clear, Coach, you know that if Michael Jordan played this sport, he would dominate, right?” The coach disagreed.

And he was dead wrong.

By raising these questions, I’m taking away from the athletes’ talents and accomplishments. That’s not the intention. The competitors put in the sweat and the effort. They spend years honing their craft. They’re very good at what they do.

But it’s very, very likely that most of them would not be here if thousands and thousands of people played their games or competed in their events. You can’t say that about soccer or football or golf. Look at how many foreign basketball players are in the NBA since the sport took off in Europe 20 years ago.

And Gumbel is right. If you went looking for a black person at the Winter Olympics, you’d think you were in whiteout conditions.

“Everybody knows where the Games are, when they’re on, and therefore, those who are the best athletes are selected by the national Olympic committees,” DeFrantz argued. “These are the best athletes in these sports. Doesn’t matter what color their skin is....

“None of this equipment cares about skin color. It’s about opportunity, encouragement and good coaching. Without any of those three, you can’t make it to the bigs. You can’t make it to the Olympic Games.”

That’s what happened with Davis, who started skating at 6 with encouragement and tough love from his mother. But we’re seeing inline skaters who have become world-class speedskaters (see: Chad Hedrick) in a matter of a few years. That in itself is a good indication of what happens when more people get involved in a sport with smallish participation.

It’s a numbers issue.

For a sport to gain entry into the Winter Olympics, it has to have federations in at least 25 countries and on at least three continents. In other words, it isn’t hard.

It is hard to figure out what’s more amazing: that NBC spends hundreds of millions of dollars for the rights to these Games or that we watch them, though not in the numbers NBC would like.

And for all that, some of these sports still haven’t taken off participation-wise. Snowboarding has. Luge hasn’t.

We watch because we’re suckers for any kind of competition, for any good story. And that’s fine, though it should be put in its proper context. We’re watching a lot of niche sports. Not that there’s anything wrong with it.

Give me a beer and the women’s biathlon, and I might need to be strapped down.

Sunday’s ice dancing competition turned into a crash-fest. Not bad.

You know you’re at something different when American ice dancer Melissa Gregory is asked what she said to her partner and husband, Denis Petukhov, after their performance Sunday: “I told him I loved him.”

You don’t get that in the NBA.