Winter Olympics appeal could widen after first South American gold, from Lucas Pinheiro Braathen
Published about 23 hours ago • 6 min read
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Alpine skier Lucas Pinheiro Braathen's Winter Olympics gold marked first ever for South America
Lucas Pinheiro Braathen after his Olympic gold. (NBC Sports on YouTube.)
The Winter Olympics are in full swing from Italy, and there have been plenty of interesting stories from that event. Personally, the Winter Games have always stood out to me even more than the Summer Games, especially for the craziness of the sports involved. A couple of recent viral X posts summed some of that up:
But from a business standpoint, the Summer Olympics has always been a bigger deal. Even the strong ratings NBC has been drawing thus far (averaging 25.4 million viewers through Wednesday, the best Winter Olympics numbers they've posted since 2014 and almost doubling the Beijing 2022 ones, although there are caveats there including time zones, measurement changes, and the COVID-19 impacts on the 2022 Games) are well behind the 30.4 million they averaged for the Paris 2024 Summer Games. And even winter sports-heavy areas don't always favor the Winter Olympics over the summer ones; as Meg Walter referenced this week in a Deseret News column advocating for the value of the Winter Games, even 72 percent of respondents to a 2016 poll from Salt Lake City TV station KSL preferred the Summer Games.
The bigger business deal globally though is that the lists of competing countries are much smaller at the Winter Games. The Olympics' own site references "Athletes from the territories of 206 National Olympic Committees and the IOC Refugee Olympic Team (EOR) will take part at the Olympic Games Paris 2024...At the Olympic Winter Games, there are usually around 2,900 athletes from more than 80 NOCs taking part in the competitions." And there's an even smaller number of countries that frequently medal, and a smaller number still that actually earn golds. That made Brazilian skier Lucas Pinheiro Braathen's gold medal in the men's super giant slalom Saturday particularly remarkable, as it was the first Winter Olympic gold ever for an athlete from South America. And it led to a celebration not often seen on a Winter Games podium, and to quite a celebration in Brazil as well:
There's a remarkable story with Pinheiro Braathen in general, who was born in Norway to a Norwegian father and Brazilian mother. He's only 25, and he competed for Norway until 2023, winning the season-long World Cup slalom title for 2022-23 and then promptly retiring before the 2023-24 season over a dispute with the federation on clothing they mandated due to sponsorship deals. He then returned to compete for Brazil in 2024 (a much harder road given their more limited program and infrastructure), and worked his way to the top of this podium. As Barry Svrluga wrote in a great Washington Post piece (another reminder of the value of that soon-to-be-closed section), Pinheiro Braathen viewed switching federations as standing up for himself and his love of fashion:
PinheiroBraathen cares not about convention. He may even loathe it.
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“It was decisive,” he said of his choice to leave the Norwegian team. “It was absolutely necessary.”
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“You know, as an athlete, you’re forced to become extremely good at handling, processing and accepting defeat more than victories. I’ve grown through my career as an Alpine ski racer — fighting to become the best in the world — to appreciate and find gratitude and find light in the shade.”
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...“Within all of the sources of inspiration that I’ve used as tools to become the athlete and the person that I am here today, if it’s one thing that I can find in common with all these personalities, it is how they express themselves, how they show who they are,” he said at his postrace news conference in Bormio. “What we wear is the one universal language that we all share, whether you are a creative, a model, a designer, a creative director, a musician, a dancer — or whether you’re an athlete.”
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“So for me, fashion is just another platform where I get to express who I am, my story, my personality, my purpose. And it is in harmony with what I love to do the most — which is sports.” ​ ...“Daring to trust oneself is something that is very universal. It’s very difficult, and it only gets more and more difficult for every single day that passes with social media and constant exposure to other people’s life and perspectives and opinions. So if [there’s] anything I hope that I can be a source of inspiration today, is that you dare to be who you are.”
There are some cases in the Olympics of athletes competing under what seems like a flag of convenience, where they might not have qualified for one country so switched to another one. Those situations are often more nuanced than they seem at first glance, and shouldn't all be criticized, but Pinheiro Braathen's story stands out even more for being the opposite; he was more than good enough to qualify for Norway, so he made his path much harder with this choice. And in doing so, he may be part of opening up the Winter Olympics to new audiences.
Pinheiro Braathen is not the only athlete from a surprising country to win gold so far. Another one came from 21-year-old Kazakh figure skater Mikhail Shaidorov, who won Kazakhstan's first Winter Olympic gold in 32 years with a surprising victory over favored American and Japanese skaters in the men's individual event Friday. Patricia Mazzei and Tariq Panja of The New York Times got some interesting quotes on the significance of Shaidorov's win:
“This is an unbelievable source of happiness for all of us in the figure skating community,” said Aiza Mambekova, 26, who skated for Kazakhstan at the 2018 Winter Olympics. She remembered Shaidorov learning to skate on a tiny rink at a local mall, coached by his father, Stanislav.
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“All of Kazakhstan is rejoicing,” she said.
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Kazakhstan’s president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, awarded Shaidorov the Order of the Leopard, an honor given to citizens who have achieved distinction in their fields. One entrepreneur announced he would give Shaidorov’s father, who at one point sold his car to help finance his son’s skating career, an Audi A8.
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Shaidorov himself got offers of a car and a luxury apartment in Astana, the capital.
While the stories of Pinheiro Braathen and Shaidorov are individually impressive, the wider potential business implication comes from the opening up of the very top of the field. As with the College Football Playoff having two Group of Six teams for the first time in 2025-26, there's significant value to having groups of fans not traditionally represented in a sport's top competition engaged, not just for themselves and their teams, but for the sense that any team can get there.
This is perhaps even bigger when it comes to actual golds. In the Olympics in particular, many fans get into events not for the event itself, but for their country's presumed medal potential in it. Widening the pool of gold-medal winners may lead to more and more interest in the Winter Olympics in countries that haven't normally watched it in great numbers. And that can only be good for the competition in the long run.
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