FAVORITE ATHLETES OF 
LATIN AMERICAN KIDS

In the Pan-Latin American Kids Study 1997, we asked Latin American children who their favorite athletes were.  The first table shows the most popular athletes from their own countries:

Favorite Athlete from Your Own Country

Note 1: The survey was conducted prior to the World Cup in France.  We would expect that the fortunes to have changed for some individuals --- some on the upswing (e.g. star goal scorer Luis ("El Matador") Hernandez for Mexico) and some on the downswing (e.g. Faustino Asprilla, who was booted off the Colombia team for dissension). On that note, the baseball home run feats of Sammy Sosa in 1998 should make him the national hero of the Dominican Republic
Note 2: In the remaining countries, here are some cited names:

• Jose Luis Chilavert (Paraguay), arguably the best soccer goalkeeper in the world; plays professionally for Velez-Sarsfeld of Argentina
• Dennis Martinez (Nicaragua), future hall-of-famer baseball pitcher; now playing for the Atlanta Braves
• Marco Echeverry (Bolivia), the soul and inspiration of the Bolivian national soccer team; now playing for the DC United soccer team of USA
• Claudio Poll (Costa Rica), Olympics gold medallist swimmer
• Mariano Rivera (Panama), relief pitcher for the New York Yankees baseball team
• Alex Aguinada (Ecuador), captain and midfield general of national soccer team, plays professionally for Necaxa of Mexico

Note 3: We point out that 48% of the kids could not name a favorite athlete.   Furthermore, there is a huge gender gap as more 34% of the boys could not name someone, versus 63% of the girls.  Apart from the traditional role for girls, a contributory factor is the absence of major female athletes in Latin America.  In fact, the only females named were: Claudia Poll (the only Olympic gold medal winner ever from Costa Rica), Hôrtencia (retired basketball player from Brazil), Gabriela Sabatini (retired tennis player from Argentina), and Ximena Restrepo (sprinter from Colombia).

The children were then asked to name their favorite athletes from outside their own countries.  Here are the top vote getters:

• Michael Jordan (8.1%), as befitting the best known athlete in the world
• Diego Maradona (3.5%), retired and controversial Argentine soccer player; played in Argentina and Italy
• Ronaldo (2.9%), best soccer player in the world; plays for InterMilan of Italy
• Enzo Franchescoli (0.7%), retired Argentine soccer player; played for River Plate of Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Pele (0.5%), retired Brazilian soccer player; the greater ever
• Marcelo Salas (0.4%), current Chilean star soccer striker; plays for Lazio of Italy
• Mike Tyson (0.4%), former world heavy-weight boxing champion
• Michael Johnson (0.3%), top-ranked middle-distance sprinter; Olympics gold medals in 200m-400m double in 1996
• Jürgen Klingsman (0.3%), German soccer scoring machine, played all over Europe
• Alexander Popov (0.3%), world champion swimmer from Russian

We point out that 78% of the kids could not name an athlete outside of their own country.  Apparently, familiarity with foreign athletes depends on exposure to foreign media, as we found that 31% of kids in multichannel television homes could name a favorite foreign athlete, compared to 20% of kids in non-multichannel television homes.   The gender gap is again very wide: 66% among boys versus 90% among girls. 

(extract from from Barbara Smela's talk "What do Juan and Maria want to be when they grow up?" delivered at the Kid Power 98 conference in Miami, FL, USA on September 8th, 1998.)

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