It's hard to say when the U.S. male gymnasts and their coaches started whining.
At one point, the U.S. men were among the best in the world. Heading into the 1932 Olympics, the New York Times thought that the U.S. men had a "good" chance of winning medals. That sounds like a rather favorable prediction, but the newspaper's metric ranged from dubious to good to very good to excellent, which meant that the New York Times were rather cautious with its predictions when it came to American gymnastics. As it turned out, though, the U.S. men won the lion's share of the medals in Los Angeles, taking home silver in the team all-around in addition to Dallas Bixler's, George Roth's, George Gulack's, Raymond Bass's, and Rowland Wolfe's individual gold medals.
By 1970, however, the tone had changed. A culture of success had turned into a culture of insufferable and embarrassing bellyaching–usually misdirected at the victors. For many years, as the Americans spewed their complaints to the U.S. media, their comments were mixed with a heavy dose of jealousy, and sometimes, an extra layer of xenophobia and racism was added to the bile.
(And y'all think that a bunch of teenage girls sulking is bad…)
Let's take a look at some of the brilliant remarks over the years…
