Determining whether an Olympic athlete is from your coverage area

That isn't a bad thing. Interest naturally increases when a team/athlete wins, and when someone even vaguely local is in the Olympics, people want to read about it. You take advantage of that when you can.

 

I say expand the area as far as you'd think readers would be interested. And if the Olympian is not current, please call them a former Olympian, bc people's insistence on "once an Olympian, always an Olympian" is insipid.

 

List of U.S. track team members: http://view.s6.exacttarget.com/?qs=...e3151225ef61ce08124325ec46872f33e966969b53657

 

Our city is about as Olympic-minded as possible for a place that hasn't actually had an Olympics. We deal with this a lot.

People are right to say, "count whoever the hell you want." Add more people later, too, if you so desire. This isn't HS sports, strict boundaries help maintain Friday night sanity. People will eat this shit up — especially compared to a second-tier high school sport — no matter how tenuous the connection.

And wow can the connections be tenuous. My city takes very seriously its count of "local" Olympians, and it can get comical. Our "Olympians" fall at various points on our own unofficial "locals scale."

5 of 5 possible "local points": Some actually live and work here. You see them running on the roads in the mornings, and you see them at the grocery store. They can be born locally or not. They're very embedded in the community.

4 of 5: Born and bred locally, but now live elsewhere to train. They still return frequently and have roots locally. Have lots of friends and former classmates in town. I.e. people know them and care about their results. I basically treat them as if they still live here.

3/5: Born elsewhere, trained extensively in town, now live and train elsewhere. I don't treat them exactly the same as I do others, but close. Again, they have friends in town, and our city was their "home" for a significant portion of their lives.

2/5: Graduated high school locally. We have a local private school that caters to athletes, so we get some through our area that way. We cover them as "locals" when they're here, but less so once they've moved on. We still "count" them, though, and at the Olympics, their event would be on our list as one to be at.

1/5: My favorite example of abusing the "local Olympian" tag is from a few years back. Johnny BumbleFuck was at the top of his sport, and would occasionally swing through town with the U.S. team for training, but never paid rent here. He wouldn't know, for instance, where the cheap gas station was, or what spot had 2-for-1 burgers on Tuesday nights. But that's fine, he's not a local, right? Well, then, right before the Olympics, he hired a local coach, and in the eyes of the city's counters, that made him "trained locally" and boom, he's on the list.

They were doing an "Olympics sendoff" a few years later and that guy happened to be there, finishing up a training camp with the rest of the U.S. team. The PA announcer was roaring to the crowd, firing everyone up, and turned to this guy. "AND NOW, LET'S GET ONE OF OUR FAVORITE LOCAL OLYMPIANS OUT HERE, JOHNNY BUMBLEFUCK!!!" I was standing right next to the guy and he was stunned. I doubt he had any idea he was a "local" Olympian. To his credit, he went out and said all the right things about the town, but it was still a hilarious situation.

I hate counting people like that, people who no one in town knows personally. But, again, who gives a shit. We have enough other people that we don't often resort to profiling or featuring guys like that, but he's on the list, and in the right situation, we'd probably write about him. In 50 years, he'll still be on the list. Shit, he'll probably have his name in the sidewalk downtown somewhere.

 

Eh, I don't use "former Olympian." Are they only "Olympians" for the two weeks their Olympics are going on? Or only for the 15 minutes they actually are competing?

I usually will term it something like, "2012 Olympian John Doe" or "John Doe, 2012 Olympian," or "three-time Olympian Jane Doe."

 

Those are great workarounds that you suggest. They obviate the issue entirely. But the insistence that the person's standing somehow be referred to in the present tense is inane. If you can be a former president of the United States, or the former New York Yankees shortstop, you can be a former Olympian.

 

It's the same thing as a Heisman Trophy winner or an NFL (or any league) draft choice. You're not a former Heisman winner (unless you're Reggie Bush), you're the 2010 Heisman winner (or whatever year is appropriate).

 

You should be as honest as possible with your readers as to the link, like you would in anything else. Use qualifiers like "Simpson, who went to Springfield High but trains in Shelbyville" or "Jones, who calls Podunk and Ocean City home."

 

I have a story working about sisters who were the only two Olympians native to the county our paper is in. They medaled in track in 1984 when just about every American medaled, and one of them medaled in Seoul. They moved away at a young age and nobody locally remembers them, which makes it a neat story to do.

 

We’ve had a few headscratchers for what determines a local athlete to cover for the Olympics. Not from here, no local ties, but trained here for one summer = local athlete. I think someone had grandparents who lived here and complained about the lack of his or her coverage, and thus another local athlete was created.

 

I wrote about Grandma (who, I guess, was too frail to travel) watching her Grandbaby compete at the Olympics on TV. Grandbaby, who does not now and has never lived in the coverage area, was claimed legitimately by at least two other papers.

 

I don't quite see it that way. Winning a trophy and getting drafted are one time, one moment deals. Competing in the Olympics is more akin to being a member of a team (even if it's only for a month). As in: "Donny Dumbo, a former Big State football player, was arrested on Monday...." I wouldn't write: "Dumbo, who played for Big State U from 2001 to 2004, was arrested..."

How would handle Michael Phelps? "Phelps, who was an Olympic swimmer in 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016?" Or just: "former Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps?"

I agree with Boogie, you're only an Olympian during the time you're actually an Olympian, otherwise you're a former Olympian.