Why were the hero athletes created?

Factors that contributed to the creation of the “hero athletes” were World War I, which was happening around that time. According to the article, over 300,000 soldiers were killed or wounded during World War 1 and that war ended in 1918. The same year WWI ended, a flu called the Spanish Influenza, which killed roughly 25-100 million people worldwide. The world was in great sadness and the “hero athletes” were created to try and take all the horrible occurences that were happening in the country, and turn their attention into something positive which would help them forget everything that was happening. So the “hero athletes” title is just self-explanatory. They were just trying to create heroes in a world of crisis.