Despite the Maga megaphone operating at max volume, the quiet dignity of America’s Winter Olympians is shutting down President Donald Trump.
“Loser” was the best Trump could manage in response to the powerful message broadcast by American freestyle skier Hunter Hess, who articulated his unease at the community divisions stoked by the Trump administration, including the treatment of citizens by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers across America.
The America I represent at the Olympic Games is not necessarily the one you see on your television screens was the gist of Hess’s rousing complaint, one of many athletes to distance himself from a president they see as intolerant of difference and deaf to the points of view of those with whom he disagrees.
Athletes are both exceptional and ordinary, elite sporting performers yet unremarkable by most other metrics. This combination of the brilliant and the mundane imbues their remarks with enhanced power and authenticity.
They are mostly young people unfamiliar with the machinations of state, utterly unskilled at spin and propaganda, which tends to magnify their protests, landing like a sledgehammer on the reactionary rhetoric of a trigger-happy POTUS firing off insults on TruthSocial.
Hess is a 27-year-old from the American Northwest backwater of Bend, Oregon. Like Bend, freestyle skiing is remote and not a little cultish, a hybrid pursuit that carries echoes of surfing and skateboard culture. Unless you are into throwing yourself down iced inclines or passing through the ether upside down, you are unlikely to strap on a pair of skis for the purpose, nor recognise those who do.
Hess was thus unknown to most outside America’s mountain fraternity until Trump raised his profile and amplified his voice.
“It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now,” Hess said.
“There’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of and I think a lot of people aren’t.
“Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S. It’s more I’m representing my friends and family back home, the people that represented it before me, all the things that I believe that are good about the U.S.”
The President takes aim at Olympic skier Hunter Hess on social media (Photo: TruthSocial)Trump immediately framed this in infantile terms as an attack on America itself.
“US Olympic skier, Hunter Hess, a real loser, says he doesn’t represent his country in the current Winter Olympics. If that’s the case, he shouldn’t have tried out for the team, and it’s too bad he’s on it. Very hard to root for someone like this. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Instead of smashing Hess into the Italian snow, Trump’s puerile attack made him an unsuspecting hero, a champion at the head of a movement speaking dude truth to power. One by one his voice was joined by teammates who articulated much the same sentiment.
Mikaela Shiffrin is the anti-Hess, recognised as one of the all-time greats, if not GOAT of alpine skiing. If you were to conjure an image of the All-American girl, you could scarcely imagine one more cherry pie radiant than the blonde, blue-eyed siren of the slalom, who came with a unifying message already prepared.
“I actually have some thoughts. I can read something that I have written if you guys don’t mind,” she said in answer to a question about representing a country riven by social unrest.
Borrowing from a speech by actress Charlize Theron delivered during the opening ceremony, Shiffrin quoted the high priest of dignified political resistance himself, the great Madiba, Nelson Mandela.
“Peace is not just the absence of conflict. Peace is the creation of an environment where all can flourish regardless of race, color, creed, religion, gender, class, caste or any other social markers of difference,” she said.
“For me this relates to the Olympics. I’m really hoping to show up and represent my own values. Values of inclusivity, values of diversity and kindness.”
Trump is so far silent on Shiffrin. She is too big, too popular, too respected, too all-American for him to silence or bully. She symbolises the American ideal, reaching her station by dint of hard work and talent, as opposed to the great wealth and manipulation that greased Trump’s passage.
Ordinary Americans can get on board with that, which is her power, and that projected by Hess and other US teammates, all of whom were cheered at the opening ceremony as opposed to booed, ala Vice President JD Vance.
Normally the dissent of a niche sporting cadre would not trouble the Trump/Vance duopoly, but carried forth by the global reach of the Olympic brand, the message is unmistakable. Trump’s America is not their America. They are competing not for his glory but for all those on the streets of Minnesota and other cities, pushing back against the diminution of a once great nation inflicting untold damage on itself.
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