You knew it was coming. Usually it doesn’t start up until the second week. But accusations are now flying, claiming that the reason Canada has no medals in the Olympics yet is due to the fact that our “sport spending” falls short:
“Why are they so good?” Diving Canada technical director Mitch Geller said Tuesday after the Chinese synchronized diving team easily won a gold medal in the women’s competition and the Canadians finished seventh. “They screen tons of kids. They put them all through some very, very good fundamental training. And then the cream rises to the top.” In Canada, governments and business are offering more money than ever, but the country’s sport spending lags behind that of China, Russia and other modern countries.
Wow. Did anyone tell Mitch that China, that most modern of countries, is a totalitarian dictatorship which may go some way to explain how they get to “screen tons of kids”? That the Chinese even measure kids by the ton may have been a hint.
But setting aside of those dreams of Nicolae Ceausescu’s 1970’s gymnastics teams – though he apparently hated sport – have to explain how it is that those who are well funded, got to China and have the best chances have failed. Yesterday, Brent Hayden, Canada’s fastest man in the pool, the reigning world champion failed to make the Olympic men’s 100-metre freestyle final. Ottawa’s fault? Did you know we had the fifth best fencer? She lost in her first match. She gone. Stephen Harper made it so. Personally. So unmodern of him.
There are reasons our entertainments are not as entertaining as others – and Olympic sport is just that, entertainment. First, we are a middling nation with middling resources which are actually allocated by Federal and Provincial governments ranging from socialists to neo-cons with a great measure of prudence. Second, we lack a pervasive national joy in achievement that drives the competitive spirit. Third, we simply like winter sports better. Fourth, the CFL gets all the real cash from Ottawa and you might as well get used to it.
Do you care? I don’t. I am happy to see some Canadians play an excellent game of softball and even was interested to see we have a men’s field hockey team even if the Ozzies smoked them. That’s what the Olympics mean to me – learning that we have citizens who love weird sports, having a slight interest in that oddly placed passion rise to my mind’s eye for about seven minutes and then moving on, forgetting them for another four years.
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