Europe is fed up with the U.S. - will our Olympic athletes feel the heat?

The start of the quadrennial Winter Olympics is just over a week away and we need no reminder that the world looks very different than it did four years ago. When the contingent of U.S. athletes walks into Milan’s San Siro Stadium on February 6th clad in Ralph Lauren’s most patriotic Americana and waving American flags, instead of cheers, they may hear something unprecedented: boos from the European crowd. Maybe it will be a mix. Maybe the U.S. viewing audience will be unaware if it happens. Maybe not.

But we have to ask this question: What do we expect? Of course, we hope it doesn’t happen. It would be unfair to the U.S. athletes who have worked so hard to be punished for the actions of their government but, as evidenced most recently by the Israeli athletes during the 2024 Paris Olympics, it does happen.

We’d like to think that the Olympic ideal of unity and cooperation through sports could keep political tensions at bay, but it can’t.

Are we naïve or arrogant enough to assume that despite Donald Trump’s yearlong assault on Europe, including threatening to take over Greenland – at first quietly then very loudly - that we deserve to be viewed on the world stage the same way we were four years ago – or forty years ago – now that the Pax Americana is over?

Americans are not accustomed to being the “bad guys” on the world stage. But that is exactly where we are.

President Trump is wildly unpopular in Europe and favorability toward the United States has dropped between 8-28 points across major EU countries since the Biden administration. Four years ago, Europeans largely viewed the U.S. as an ally, but today just 16% say they do. Recently, Trump insulted NATO troops, their families, and essentially all Europeans by saying that the European troops stayed away from the frontlines in the war in Afghanistan. The backlash was fierce. And it may be felt, unfairly, by U.S. athletes at the Olympics. Four years ago in Beijing, the United States won eight gold medals. That was eight times our national anthem was played. Will we have to worry that the playing of the United States national anthem next month may invoke boos – as we have seen in Canada during NHL games? Not friendly competition, but hostility from what were once friends and allies.

And how would American viewers react? Unfortunately, we would likely go into our respective partisan corners: Democrats would see this as an affirmation that Donald Trump has irreparably harmed America’s standing in the world, while Republicans would likely blame anyone but Trump and rally around the flag and the athletes while avoiding the larger issue of why former allies are turning on us, and, finally, the low information voters unaligned with either party may watch some TikTok videos and shake their heads.

I hope I’m wrong and that my worry about U.S. protests will be unfounded. I’d like nothing more than to enjoy the competition, the beauty, the drama and the personal stories that are the hallmarks of the Olympics and escape the turmoil dominating the headlines. I hope for the U.S. athletes who have endured hardships and loss on their journeys that they will be able to focus on their sport and not politics. But I’m not confident that they will.