Can Tears Help Humanize World-class Athletes in the Eyes of the General Public

As the 2020 Tokyo Olympics draws to a close, major media outlets in Japan and around the world are already coming up with compilations of these Games' greatest moments. Particular to the Japanese case is a sheet abundance of crying on the part of both the athletes and commentators (many of whom are former athletes who participated in past Olympics). In media interviews, athletes shed tears of joy when they won medals, and plenty more tears of regret and disappointment when they lost close matches or just missed a medal. As commentators cried on-screen with the athletes, the media outlets hope that the audience cried with them.

While it is impossible to know how many viewers actually cried at the sight of Olympic athletes crying, to see top athletes cry in public does much to make these individuals more human than the general public usually gives them credit for. After all, the athletes, being capable of running, jumping, and playing stronger and faster than ordinary people, are almost seen as superhuman by those watching them compete on TV and in the news. To see them cry shows that the athletes are emotionally, and even physically, vulnerable, just like normal people, making them much more relatable for the general public.

That relatability is certainly necessary to deflect some of the excess pressure on the athletes to win medals on the world stage, and public criticism of them when they fail to perform at top levels as the public expected them to. This Olympics has exposed the prevalence of mental health issues even among the world's best athletes, often caused by overly inquisitive media probings, backed by the implicit demands of the general public that they behave as both the physical and emotional superhumans that they are trained to be, both on and off the field.

That excessive pressure to win is rooted in how little the audience sees the athletes. For the general public, Olympic athletes were previously only seen as medal-winning machines. Their value to the audience back home was singular: whether they can win medals, and what are the colors of the medals they win. That dehumanization is only entrenched by the fact that most of the athletes competing in the Olympics are only scrutinized by the general public once every four years. Most sports are simply not popular or commercialized enough for people to continue watching them train and play match after match.

As a result, the audience simply forgets that every Olympic athlete, whether capable of winning medals or not, have devoted, often silently and unnoticed by the general public, for years and decades, perfecting their skills in a particular sport to the point that they can compete on the world stage. Those years and decades of sweat, blood, and tears have surely made athletes both stronger and faster, but subject to sudden fluctuations in performances accompanied by intense pressure to continue being better and better without any downturns and slumps. Emotional and physical tolls accompany them every step of the way.

Crying, in its limited way, finally helps the audience come to the realization that the athletes have suffered so much out of the spotlight. As crying athletes are given attention by media outlets, there will be more follow-up coverage on their upbringing and the efforts they expended to get to the world stage, justifying the joys of their wins and sorrows of their losses reflected in their tears. While viewers will never know the full extent of their efforts, tears can at least bring them some levels of understanding of the difficulties of top-level athletes, so that they sympathize with losers rather than merely criticize them.

And this public show of tears is particularly refreshing in the often emotionally subdued Japanese context. In a country where public display of extreme emotions, especially among men, is often considered a sign of a lack of professionalism, the fact that top athletes who represent the country at the Olympics can do so freely should be taken as some food for thought. Perhaps it can lead to at least some changes in mainstream corporate culture in which those facing excess pressure to perform can speak out about their difficulties rather than repress such thoughts through passive-aggressive comments accompanied by alcohol.

And perhaps, to take it a step even further, Japanese society, in general, can change toward one where public displays of emotions are less frowned upon. In a country in which people display public apathy toward the most sensitive of social issues, a little more emotion displayed in public can go a long way to get more people to resonate with the suffering of others and act upon their own good faith to improve the lots of people they do not know intimately. While crying is a bit extreme in the ups and downs of daily life, more outward displays of sorrow and joy can bring people closer and get them to act in unison in less perfunctory ways.