I’m going to defend Lochte a bit. As more comes out it appears that they may actually have been robbed or victims of extortion by police. Nothing on videos and little evidence of any vandalism except for a torn poster.
When Phelps was “at that point in the games”, there was no Ledecky or somebody else male or female with the same level and width of talent / achievement. In 2004, Phelps had 5 Gold medals and 2 Bronze medals. Going forward, we have Ledecky, who is as entertaining to watch as Phelps, no doubt about it. However, we still have Phelps who continue to achieve and entertain us by his races. So, the attention is split and, sorry, there are less than 7 medals on Ledecky neck. I bet those 7 medals in one Olympics were pushing attention beyond anything seen before, and not the fact that Phelps happen to be a male swimmer. In addition, we had so many unexpected “surprise” heroes at this particular Olympics Swimming events, that I am afraid to start listing them, because, I will simply forget somebody. These swimmers, while humble and less known then either Ledecky or Phelps still demanded lots and lots of talks and attention. I was at awe so many times, while watching them swim. I did not see that, for example, Maya got less attention than Murphy and frankly, I did not see that Ledecky got less attention than Phelps at all, she was called the most outstanding many times over. All this talk about sexism is irrelevant, we simply had the best Olympics ever, we had astounding swimming events among others, and one of the biggest heroes there were girls, who were praised at the same level or higher as their male teammates.
I do not recall any male gymnast (any across ALL Olympic teams from different countries) who got more attention than Simone. Maybe it is also sexism the other way around? Why we do not hear about male gymnasts being ignored and pushed down, aren’t they also deserving?
Not to take anything away from Maya at all, but Murphy won golds in two individual events plus a relay, whereas Maya won a gold in one individual event plus a relay.
(Everyone must have noted how the commentators stressed her perfect math SAT score at age 15!)
I’m going to miss the commercials. There were great ones from heart warming to really funny.
I loved the Simone Biles ad about Tide Pods “small but powerful”. Great ad.
And I loved all the “thanking mom” ads.
I loved the GE ones with Ricky.
“I do not recall any male gymnast (any across ALL Olympic teams from different countries) who got more attention than Simone. Maybe it is also sexism the other way around? Why we do not hear about male gymnasts being ignored and pushed down, aren’t they also deserving?”
You don’t recall any male gymnast getting such big coverage as the women because you were watching from the United States. I bet in Japan the men got more coverage than the women in gymnastics It’s no secret that the publicity and TV coverage in each country focuses heavily on their own athletes. In Romania the publicity focused heavily on the fencing team foil competition where they won the gold. This is not surprising.
I think the US men’s gymnasts will get plenty of publicity in the US as soon as they start winning. Simone Biles won four gold medals in Rio. The entire men’s gymnastics team won exactly zero gold medals.
No sooner did Simone win her gold, than her commercials were aired. I’ll bet they made commercials with Allie. Will we ever get to see them?
I’m missing the rhythm of coming home from work and checking out what’s streaming live. Didn’t go into the Olympics with a lot of enthusiasm, but it definitely grew on me. The last weekend was a lot of fun watching sports I used to do before they became Olympic sports.
“Not to take anything away from Maya at all, but Murphy won golds in two individual events plus a relay, whereas Maya won a gold in one individual event plus a relay.” -
Maya - 2 golds, 1 silver and 1 bronze:
Gold - 200 back, 4x200 Free Relay
Silver - 400 IM <- the hardest event of them all!!!
Bronze - 200 IM
Murphy - 3 Golds - 100 back, 200 back and 4x100 Medley Relay
Very comparable.I would say that combo of Silver and Bronze is more points for the team than one Gold at the regular swim meet. I do not remember exactly how it counts. But anyway, their accomplishments are very comparable and I would say that Dirado got a bit more attention.
My point is that all this sexism or not is just an irrelevant thing.
I don’t think the attention paid to Maya is a result of simple sexism so much as it that she has a certain star power quality: Appealing personality, interesting life story, attractive face, and winning smile. Add a couple of gold medals and all that adds up to someone who will get a lot of publicity. I identified Maya as an athlete could become a star (provided she won a gold medal) back in a series of posts #403-#411. And she then did in fact win the individual gold medal.
Men can have star power too, although the qualities that comprise it are not quite the same as women.(See Bolt, Usain). Murphy appears to be a fine young man - admirable in every way, but he doesn’t strike me as having the kind of star presence that lights up a room when he walks in. Same for Katie Ledecky, an excellent young woman who really cleaned up in the gold medals department, but she won’t be a star in the same way that Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas, Missy Franklin, or Janet Evans are or were.
Men’s gymnastics never gets the same coverage as women’s, even if the men are winning. The two sports where women get more coverage are gymnastics at the summer games and figure skating at the winter. In virtually every other sports, men get more coverage, including swimming and even track where there are similar events for both genders. For example, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce also won gold in the women’s 100M run in both Beijing and London and was in Rio, but did not get anywhere near the press coverage of her fellow Jamaican, Bolt. She came in third this time.
Maybe men’s gymnastics will get more coverage when they start wearing sequins and glitzy scrunchies. 
I haven’t read this thread but I’m throwing it out there. Shame on NBC for their terrible coverage throughout the entire Olympics. I want to see events live. With social media, the outcomes get spoiled as they happen, so I don’t wanna wait until “prime time” to watch something. It’s bad enough if you’re in ET “prime time” but for everyone else? The extra wait time sucks.
Yeah, well. That’s the reality of life today. Networks make money with prime time advertising so that’s when the top events are going to air. I actually thought the coverage was OK. There were parts I didn’t love, but it’s not easy to cover something like the Olympics
I had the luxury of watching tv coverage during the daytime and between the 4-5 channels providing NBC coverage, we saw a lot and a lot of it was aired before being reshown in the evening.
CaliCash, you could stream it if you had a cable subscription. Why ‘Shame on NBC’? It is a business and sells its product. If you want to pay for it and get streaming live, you can do that. If you want to watch it for ‘free’, you can do that too but the price you pay is you watch it when NBC provides it, and you have to watch a million commercials as that’s how NBC makes money.
You really aren’t entitled to coverage at all.
If you want to see it live watch the streaming. NBC’s live coverage via streaming was outstanding IMO.
I am not positive but I think the California streaming was not available in real time. My son in LA watched events on his computer. Some things he could get at the same time that I watched on the East coast but many were not available until 3 hours later. We have Verizon FIOS which he could get on his computer.
Streaming through a Roku in California was live.
Yeah, I barely watched the NBC Primetime coverage because I had already streamed everything I wanted live. The commentary on the live streams was in most cases superior to NBC’s as well.