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[QUOTE="Forza Azzurri, post: 5672516, member: 1452"]
I think sportsmanship has gotten better across the board, and not just in the olympics.

I attribute it to a few reasons:

A lot of it in the Olympics was the us vs them mentality of the western world vs the soviet bloc.  Those global divisions largely disappeared in the aftermath of the coming down of the Berlin Wall, the complete, and utter, failure of communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.  Today's olympic athletes, who were mostly born into a much more unified world (relatively speaking), don't know those divisions  - although they are starting to reappear.

Social media - If you have ever watched the Lakers-Celtics ESPN documentary, those teams hated each other.  Magic and Larry hated each other.  I think the toxicity of social media - especially the vile things that fans say about players  - has had the impact of athletes banding together to support each other.  Look no further than our own board where a poster called Autry a b***h (the post was removed by the admins) - just because Autry has not had the required level of success here.

I also think that athletes that reach those elite levels have so much respect for each other in terms of how much work and sacrifice is required to get to those levels - whether it be professional sports or the olympics.

Elite athletes also know each other so much earlier in life these days because the train together/compete against each other at much younger ages.
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