The willingness of athletes, led by Simone Biles, to talk about the pressures they face as elite athletes on the Olympics stage, has forced a look at how NBC presents the Games to the public
NEW YORK — If NBC’s Michele Tafoya expected exultation or tears of joy from American swimmer Caeleb Dressel when she asked how it felt to reach his dream of an Olympic gold medal, that’s not what she got. He was happy, but hurting. “It’s a really tough year,” he said. “It’s really hard.” Olympic athletes, most notably gymnast Simone Biles, haven’t been afraid to express the mental and emotional difficulties they’ve faced during these pandemic games, a development that’s thrown NBC a curve. The network that presents the Games has been forced to pivot, and the addition of Michael Phelps to its broadcast team turned into a master stroke for unanticipated reasons. Yet it’s also worth questioning whether an intense focus on gold is out of touch for what these Games have become. For most of the athletes, it has been an extraordinarily intense year. After training with the goal of being ready in 2020, the Games’ postponement to 2021 — and the pandemic that caused it — forced them to decide if they wanted to essentially put another year of their lives on hold for what is often a lonely quest, said Mark Aoyagi, coordinator of the Sports and Performance Psychology program at the University of Denver. Then they traveled to a lockdown environment to perform without their friends and family present; indeed, they had hardly any audience at all. That strain was evident when NBC connected Dressel with his parents, wife and sister at home for a conversation shortly after his swim. He started sobbing. In its coverage, NBC should make it a point to talk to athletes about their mental, not just physical, preparation for the games, said Hillary Cauthen, a sports psychologist from Austin, Texas, who is on the executive board of the Association for Applied Sports Psychology.
