Let’s go back about two weeks (yeah, I could have written this two weeks ago, but I was busy staying up until 4 in the morning to talk about diving, so go fuck yourself, hypothetical Internet critic who would say somthing like “OLD!!!!11!!! Learn 2 blog n00b” after reading my lede) to when Canada sat behind Togo and Armenia in the Olympic medal standings, the general public was flipping out about our lack of success through the first week of the Games, the CBC was airing segments about the difference between a medal hope and a medal contender and Ron MacLean was the only voice of reason in this sea of anti-patriotism that was undoubtedly formed over how ugly the Canadian Olympic apparel was. Seriously, who would wear something like that? That’s what the COC gets for having their stuff made by Zellars. Remember when Roots had the contract and made stuff that was the envy of the entire world? When I was 12, all I wanted was one of those $400 Olympic jackets and $80 berets. Man those were cool.
At the time (two weeks ago, not when I was 12), I thought all the hysteria about Canada’s failures were perfectly warranted, and even as we won 18 medals in about four days to ease the terrified masses, I still felt a little disappointed by the way the Olympics have turned out for us Canucks. Yeah, we had our highest medal total since Atlanta, but it still felt a little incomplete.
The real reason that everyone was so concerned about the Olympic squad and why I’m still disappointed in the result even after we took home a goodlys schwak of hardware actually has nothing to do with the Summer Olympics. It all comes back to two stats: 24 and 3. The former is the number of medals won by Canada at the 2006 Winter Olympics; the second is our subsequent placing in the total medal count standings.
(As an aside here, I find it rather amusing that in Canada, we don’t really care what colour the medal is, as long as we win it. With the exception of hockey and curling, any medal is gold in the eyes of the Canadian public. Take, for example, Cindy Klassen, who won only one gold but 5 medals in Turin and became a Canadian icon because of it. If she were American, no one would care about anything except the gold (which is equally odd because the Americans also toll the virtues of the total medal count, as it keeps them ahead of the Chinese). Anyways, my point is that we, as Canadians, have kind of low standards.)
Think about that for a second: as recently as 1992 in Albertville, Canada wasn’t even earning double digits in medals. When we hosted in 1988 in Calgary, we didn’t win a single gold. Now, 14 (or 18) years later, we win seven golds, 24 medals and finish third in the total medal count. And if that weren’t enough, 23 other Canadians finished top 5. Basically, leaving Turin, there was a lot to be excited about: the Own the Podium plan was working.
And though none of this was really big deal heading into these Games, it’s not unrealistic to say that it was still in the back of Canadian minds that not only did we exceed all expectations at our last Olympics, but that the money we’ve sank into Olympic training has been paying off. And then, Canada goes a week without winning a medal and everyone starts thinking things like: “I thought we were developing into a world power in sports. We’re spending all this money, we finished third last time, what’s going on? Why can’t we win medals? There are like a million more sports in the Summer Games, shouldn’t we be winning more medals? Man that Nastia Liukin is hot.”
So that’s why the Canadian mentality was so shattered when we sucked up the opening week of the Games, but why is it okay to be disappointed?
It’s the only place other than Norway where it happens, but the Winter Olympics have grown to completely overshadow the Summer in this country. Consider that Canadians won medals in 10 of the 15 disciplines in Turin and gold in six of them (both more than any other country). Compare that to Beijing where Canada medalled in only 10 of 29 disciplines. It’s easy to wonder why we can’t have a similar kind of success in the Summer Olympics that we have in the Winter. So yes, while it’s nice to have our medal count go up in a Summer Olympics for the first time in a dozen years, the fact is that when all of those medals come in rowing, and come as silvers and bronzes, they just aren’t as much reason to get excited about. Moreover, with so many medals available, it’s odd that we aren’t winning more just out of sheer opportunity.
The other reason why I’m disappointed in these Olympics is that we only won two medals combined on the track and in the pool. These (along with Gymnastics) are the disciplines where one great athlete can carry a country to a big medal count, and Canada just doesn’t have that athlete. We don’t have an athlete who can win a couple medals in the 100m and 200m of his or her stroke and drag his or her team to a relay medal. We don’t have a Kristy Coventry, who won four medals for Zimbabwe. We don’t have a Usain Bolt who won Jamaica three golds. And the sad thing is that we used to (at least on the track). So while it’s all well and good to win 6 medals in rowing/canoeing/kayaking, it’d be nice to have the swimmer who could do that all by his or herself. Klassen was this person for the Turin Olympic team, but Canada needs one for their Summer team too.
So I think I’ve gone off track a little, but I also think I’ve gotten my point across: the success of the Own the Podium campaign and the 2006 Olympic team, combined with more funding, more events, and payments for medals for the first time, meant that we felt really good about the state of amateur sports in this country. Then we sucked for a week and it sucked all that goodwill out of the Canadian public and left only questions as to why we were doing so poorly.
