The 2018 Winter Olympics will draw to an end tonight, but history was made these past two weeks in Pyeongchang. This article goes in depth about the success of Ester Ledecka, a Czech Republic Olympian that has recently become a legend. It commemorates her for becoming the first female to win gold medals in two separate Olympic events, which were the women's snowboarding parallel slalom and the women' super-G, an alpine skiing event. Crouse, the author of the article, writes to all readers worldwide about this Olympic accomplishment, something not done often as The New York Times is a fairly liberal outlet, but was brought about in the spirit of the global competition. Crouse keeps an upbeat, congratulatory tone throughout the majority of the article, signifying how wonderful of an accomplishment this is. She mainly does this not through diction, but through appeals, specifically appeals to credibility. Throughout the article she not only quotes Ledecka herself, but also six others, including Olympic medalists Jorien ter Mors, Mikaela Shiffrin, and Lindsey Vonn, and Ledecka's trainers Trapp and Reiter. They all talk of how proud they are of Ledecka and how she is an inspiration to kids wanting to excel in multiple sports. A sense of happiness and pride for Ledecka also arises in the reader in these quotes such as when Shriffin talks about screaming and crying when Ledecka won gold in Alpine skiing and how she thought the sport was hard, but apparently not.
As I mentioned, Ledecka has become an inspiration to kids around the world wishing to excel in multiple sports. Crouse repeats this many times throughout the article in both her own voice and the voice of others. She takes the opportunity to address this problem of specialization occurring too early and children being forced to chose between sports, rather than getting the best of both worlds. She does this too by appealing to credibility, using Olympian Felix McGrath's opinion on the negative effects of childhood specialization to emphasize her own thoughts. She kills two birds with one stone meshing the two occasions together. This is a very successful article. Its purpose to showcase Ester Ledecka as an athlete and role model was accomplished through the use of praises from other looked up to Olympians that evoked a sense of pride and joy in the reader. The article was written in spirit of the Olympics, a competition that brings the entire world together peacefully and excitingly, and it reflected that. While The New York Times' primary base is the US, this article held high a Czech athlete for all Americans to look up to. It highlighted the similarities that exist across the globe rather than the differences that are too often the first things to come to mind.
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AuthorAveri Childress; high school student, culture addict, softball player, artist Archives
February 2018
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