By unofficial count, the crowd at any given venue at the 2002 Winter Games is roughly 95 percent American. At any arena, American flags drown out the competition, as do songs by Elvis, Little Richard and the occasional Dwight Yoakam. You could be blind and half deaf and still know you're on Yankee soil.
But you wouldn't know it from the cheering.
As Johan Ohlsen, a Swede from Stockholm, said the other day during the luge competition at Utah Olympic Park, "you cheer for everybody."
He was wearing one of those Americans are crazy smiles.
But good crazy.
And so far, nobody's screaming jingoism.
Perhaps the flags hanging from the 300 balconies at the Canyon Road Towers Condominiums tell part of the reason. The Canyon Road condos sit on the fringe of downtown, three blocks from the Medals Plaza, and to look at them is to look at the United Nations. Flags wave from countries near and far, from Great Britain to China, from Portugal to Brazil, from Norway to Israel.
The residents of the condos, senior citizens mostly, decided to fly the flags in an effort to show the world that Salt Lake's ties are extensive. The rules were simple: Residents could hang flags that either represented where they came from, where they once lived, or where they had children or grandchildren on LDS Church missions.
Places they'd been on a cruise ship did not qualify.
So they hung the flags and counted them up, and it turns out 90 countries are represented. That's 13 more than are represented in the Salt Lake Games.
The message is clear: More than a few people around here are conflicted. Maybe not enough for a trip to the therapist, but enough to make it hard to decide who exactly to pull for in figure skating.
Esther Schaaf Bugger knows what I'm talking about. Esther was at the women's hockey match between the United States and Germany Tuesday at the E Center. She was not hard to spot. She was the one standing up almost the entire time waving a German flag. Esther was born in Germany in a city called Goppingen. Now she lives in a city in northern Utah called Centerville. She arrived in the United States in 1972 to spend some time with a pen pal in Idaho. Then she met her husband, T.J., and she's been here ever since.
When Tuesday's match began she didn't know what to do. "I was in limbo-land," is how she described it. "I didn't know which way to cheer. I've been here forever and I love it ? but your country is always your country."
Then the U.S. vaulted to a 2-0 lead, and Esther knew exactly what to do. She jumped up with her German flag. "When Germany became the underdog the choice was easy," she said. "I hoped they'd get one goal."
They didn't. The match ended 10-0. But Esther took it in stride. Life is good when you can't lose.
Another reason for all the ecumenical cheering might be because most Americans, and Utahns, wouldn't know a luge sled from a triple Axel.
Or a curling rock.
As German curling coach Dieter Kolb diplomatically observed after his team's first match in Ogden, "Well, sure, there are times when it might be that they (Americans in the crowd) cheer for a rock that might not be the best." Then he quickly added, "But they don't cheer for a rock that misses, either.
"I find so many people here know German," said Dieter. "It's amazing. They've either been stationed there at an air base maybe or they have German grandpas or mothers-in-law."
And it sure doesn't stop with Germany. With the exception of American Indians, ask an American, any American, where they're from and you'll get at least two answers. Sometime, somehow, someone in their family came from somewhere else.
In my case, my grandparents came from Sweden, and even now, a generation removed from the old country, I find myself thinking "Go Sverige!" Even if it's against America ? as soon as Sweden gets behind.
Lee Benson's column runs daily during the Olympics. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.