I found the following article: http://www.thegrio.com/opinion/wheres-the-diversity-at-the-winter-olympics.php on msnbc.com. As you might have guessed from this posts title, the article talked about the lack of minority representation at the Winter Olympics, not just today but throughout its history.
Why is it that the number of minority athletes participating in winter sports is so limited? The author of the article states "African-Americans simply aren't participating in winter sports due largely to limited access and exposure to these sports, a lack of resources and opportunities to train, and the high costs associated with them."
What I find most interesting is that they fail to mention other minorities, particularly those from Latin American countries. Is it just the warm climate that's not conducive to wanting to participate and support winter sports? Or is it something more?
Well, I think it is interesting that people are talking about a lack of diversity in winter sports, particularly when we consider the relationship between melanin (the pigment producing compound) and geographical climates: melanin protects against UV rays from the sun, so people in warmer climates evolved with more melanin than people in colder climates. I think this is the reason why winter sports have been traditionally practiced by people with less melanin.
However, in our modern world, there are people of all skin colors living in all countries, so it is important to ask about diversity in teams from countries with cold winters. I believe that the resource intensive nature of winter sports is related to the lack of diversity, but maybe people from other backgrounds just do not relate to this type of sport.
Regarding Latin America, most countries have very limited resources and many different challenges to face, so I believe that it it would not be a good decision to spend such a large amount of resources to participate in an event that has no meaning to us at all, because our climate is completely different and our cultural traditions are adapted to our local conditions.
I think for the most part this issue is broken down into geographic location. If you look at the number of minorities (at least in the United States) living in regions where there are a lot of ski resorts, there just are not as many as there are in other areas of the country. I took a look at where a lot of the Olympic skiers are from, and most of them are from states like CO, UT, ID, OR, NoCA, VT, etc. Not to say there are not minorities attracted to those regions and indeed do alpine ski/snowboard. I tried to find some skiers who were minorities in the winter Olympics in the past, but couldn't find anything. There is a National Brotherhood of Skiers (www.nbs.org) however, so there is a push at least to get more African Americans in the Olympics. I would assume that this is something that we will eventually see with at least one minority. Think about the history of some of our other sports....Latinos I believe are no longer the minority in the Major League Baseball, the number of Asians on the PGA tour continues to grow, etc. Of course, I'm only talking about American sports, but it would be interesting to see if there are similar trends in other countries with other sports.
I agree with ryan that it is most likely a construct of geography, not to say that geography is not something that has been a construct of other issues. Even for winter sports that should not be limited by geography there are still huge distances between training spaces. Take speed skating for instance, (I was glad to see that the article mentioned Shani Davis)the majority of the US team lives in Salt Lake. Primarily because that is where facilities support speed skating. Most skating rinks aren't maintained to a point where they could support skaters going those speeds. Getting into bobsled tacks I could only find 2 in the country (lake placid and salt lake)and I bet track time costs a lot because not many people do it.
There probably should have been something in the article about the Asian Americans who are on the team. There are a couple of people of Korean decent that are on the speed skating team. This is again speed skating, and we shouldn't have to rely on one sport for our small amount of diversity. It should also be noted that Korea and the US are the top two metal winners for speed skating, so it s something that both cultures have in common. This could be a reason for the lack of minorities though, it may be something they just don't consider doing because it isn't something that their group is thought of as doing.
Sara made a good point about the Latin American countries not participating in the games. There really is no reason to. All of the athletes would have to move out of country to train, and how do you make the decision to move to train at skiing when you have maybe skied once on a vacation. I know this is different than the original topic, because we are talking about people that are living in the US to start with, but there are far fewer countries that participate in the winter games due to climate.