---
title: "Olympic Spirit"
description: "Six in ten Americans were especially looking forward to the Winter Olympics."
date: "2010-02-17"
authors:
  - name: "Russell Heimlich"
    job_title: "Former web developer"
    link: "https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/russell-heimlich/"
url: "https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2010/02/17/olympic-spirit/"
---

# Olympic Spirit

As the opening ceremonies kicked off the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver last weekend, most Americans were eagerly looking forward to this year’s games. Fully 61% of Americans said they were excited about the coming Olympics, more than said so about the Super Bowl (58%) or this summer’s World Cup (23%). The winter games were also more highly anticipated than the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; 52% of Americans said they were especially looking forward to those games two years ago. High interest in this year’s games is driven by women. While a strong majority of men were looking forward to both the Super Bowl (67%) and the Winter Olympics (59%) in the early January survey, women were far more excited about the Olympics (63%) than the Super Bowl (50%). [Read More](https://www.pewresearch.org/pubs/1481/interest-men-women-winter-olympics-super-bowl-world-cup)