Olympians

Woke up this morning (after a LONG night of watching the Women's Gymnastics All-Around competition) and NPR was doing a story about French athletes. It was said that French Olympians are viewed there are we view celebrities here.
I'm not so sure that I completely agree with that.
Granted, I'm not in France and I'm not living through the experience in France right now, but it's hard for me to imagine the paparazzi following French Olympians around all the time, waiting outside their homes, the restaurants in which they are dining, the shops in which they are shopping, etc. The paparazzi are crazy here. I guess there is a market for it, otherwise they wouldn't do it (although I am in the middle of writing a song entitled "supply and demand" about how the law doesn't apply to everything. Perhaps celebrity coverage should be included-I know I'm not the only one who is disgusted by the coverage of Brittney Spears instead of what is going on in Georgia...) But that doesn't happen in France. I remember back in the last French Presidential election when the media was following Ségolène Royal everywhere and taking photos of her at the beach with her kids and people were amazed. I was amazed that they were amazed! That seems so normal here, and yet it was a foreign concept to the French that their Presidential candidates would get so much media coverage including details of their private lives.
Perhaps it has gotten worse since then and moved on to Olympians. It is certain that Laure Manadou and her soap-opera life is getting a lot of coverage in French and American press!

One thing that is very interesting to me is the different types of sports that are covered. Of course Basketball, which is hugely popular in the US generally, is getting a lot of coverage here, but other sports that are not popular except during the Olypics are getting much coverage: Gymnastics, Swimming, Volleyball.
In France, it is a little bit different. The main page of LeMonde.fr today is about French fencers and if you go to the page dedicated to the Olympics, you see coverage of all types of sports! Handball, Sabre, Cycling, Judo, Canoe, etc. I think, in general, the French have a more holistic view of sports whereas Americans focus mainly on basketball, baseball, and football. So to see more sports being covered isn't that much of a surprise, but I was surprised by the coverage of sports that the French are not normally so enamored with! Sabre? Canoe? Amazing!

The Olympics is a great time to bring some attention to those athletes that work very hard year round and get little credit for it. Home Depot is running ads during the games about the number of olympians that work/have worked for their company. In reading about Lolo Jones (American hurdler from Des Moines) I read that she once worked for Home Depot herself! It is amazing to think that these folks lead regular lives, working cash registers during the year and then go off to compete in the Olympics!

What do you think about all this? Is the media coverage all that surprising? What do you think Olympians do when they aren't competing?