This smiling, happy, blinged out lady is the rightful flagbearer for Canada at last night’s closing ceremonies. Instead, trampolinist Karen Cockburn had the honour, but, with no disrespect to Cockburn, the COC made the wrong call on that one.
When you think about it, Huynh was really the only logical choice.
Cockburn got the honour as a sort of lifetime achievement award for winning two silvers and a bronze over the past three Olympics. Now, usually I would have no problem with this, except that Emilie Heymans has the exact same record over the exact same span, so the two should have either been co-flagbearers, or they should have cancelled each other out. For Cockburn to be named the flagbearer over Heymans is an insult to Heymans, and the COC either didn’t think of that, or they did, and either way they shouldn’t have done it.
The only other lifetime achievement candidate would have been Adam Van Koeverden, but not only was he the flagbearer in the opening ceremonies, but he also cemented his legacy at the 2008 Olympics as that guy who didn’t win the one race and gave up and finished 8th in the other one. So they couldn’t pick him.
That leaves only the gold medallists. Since we can’t have 9 guys carrying the flag, that eliminates the men’s eight rowing squad, leaving only Eric Lamaze and Carol Huynh, and between the two, Huynh is the easy choice: Lamaze isn’t really even an athlete, and his past problems with cocaine make him the unworthy candidate, leaving only Huynh.
So yeah, there it is in under 300 words. I feel kind of bad for the only good thing to ever come out of Hazelton, BC.
