It is rare for the television coverage of sporting heroes to be concerned with aspects of their behaviour and thoughts beyond matters strictly relating to their physical performance. Sometimes sports reports also refer to the psychological preparations which enable athletes to improve that performance, but there is very little else. The main exception to these constraints is found in interviews with sports personalities in which the hopes and fears of the heroes are discussed. Often this format masks a somewhat prurient interest in the emotions experienced by winners and losers. Only very occasionally in the television sports calendar does the commentator's near total concern with physical achievements give way to an uneasy sense that something might be left out by so fixated an approach. However, mainly because a compulsory cultural element accompanies the Olympic Games, such doubts do regularly surface in coverage of their opening and closing ceremonies. On these occasions, broadcasters find themselves obliged to join with the Games' oganisers to make much of the supposed connections between sport and culture. It certainly does disturb momentarily the usually complacent routines of sports reporting.

This chapter takes the ceremonies that bracketed the 1992 Barcelona Olympics as the stimulus prompting a re-examination of the television sporting hero. It begins with a short account of the nature of modern competitive sports and the values typically inherent in television coverage of them.