Canadian Olympians: Kicked in the Nuts

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It’s not a big deal that Canada doesn’t have single fucking medal at the Beijing Olympics, right?

I mean, our athletes are trying their best, showing good sportsmanship and true Olympic spirit as they lose match after match, finish seventh in race after race and generally dick around to the point where I could name some truly obscure countries that somehow have more hardware than our men and women.

(Just for the record, countries with more medals than Canada now include: North Korea, South Korea, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Togo, Kazakhstan (fucking Borat is beating us), Krygistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Whatthefuckisgoingonistan.)

We’re a G8 motherfucking country.

We have food, water, good government, a peaceful society, a quasi-solid economy, some major imports and exports, a whole lotta softwood lumber, Steve Nash, a bunch of hockey players … and no Olympic medals.

(We also have, as was pointed out to me after my last post, an environmental record nearly as sketchy as the United States, but I digress.)

Anyway, the lack of medals is totally okay, because we’re trying very, very hard.

I’m sorry, but no.

If this was an issue of diplomacy, or negotiation or international trade … maybe trying hard and not getting results would be alright, so long as we were making progress.

I don’t want to sound like I’m pissing on the Olympic spirit here — but this is sports. You know, competition? The end result is the only reason we do it.

You beat your personal best? Congratulations! I beat my personal best walking to work the other day. I didn’t get a medal, but I did buy a coffee at Tim Hortons to celebrate and my money went to some disabled kid’s camping trip.

So I’m a winner, too!

You fucking losers. What part of competition do you not understand?

I’m not demanding victory here. No Canadian is going to outswim Michael Phelps, beat the Chinese in badminton or dunk all over the American basketball team.

But that doesn’t mean that you can shrug it off afterwards like this schmuck:

“This relay was still a very good relay. I know you always want to have medals hanging around your necks, they have to award the effort. But we just took two seconds off our national record and if you look back, that time would have put us on top of the podium in Athens.” — Brent Hayden, loser

Or this guy:

“Everybody’s racing, everybody’s competing, we’re having a great meet, and we’re showing that we belong on this stage.” — Brian Johns, also a loser

Yes Brian, you belong on the ’stage’. Just not on the ‘podium’.

I don’t care how many medals we bring home. I really don’t. Mostly because I stop giving a shit about the Olympics as soon as it ends.

But I do care about this laid-back, pathetic attitude towards what is supposed to be the highest level of competition in the world.

If you’re going to be satisfied with shaving time off your own personal best and proving you belong at the event, even if you don’t belong in the winner’s circle, stay home and set your personal best in Canada.

Can you imagine what would happen if, after losing at the 2006 Olympics, Team Canada’s hockey players had said something to the effect of “we feel like we proved that we belong here” or “in past games, that effort would have been good enough for the podium”.

Ha. This is what they said:

• “You expect to be there right at the end,” added Sakic. “I think we learned a lot here about what it takes at this level, this stage. We weren’t good enough.”
• “I’ll take all the — deservedly so — the responsibility of us not winning. That’s the situation I’m in and the position I have,” Gretzky said. “[I] feel tremendously responsible that we didn’t win.”It’s nobody else’s fault.”

We take hockey a lot more seriously than badminton or fencing, granted. But that doesn’t mean that we should be hunting out moral victories in losses or putting a happy face on a team of Olympians that has done nothing but choke in the five days they’ve been in Beijing.

I’m overreacting, I know, but I’m trying to make a point. Athletics, especially at the highest level, is about competition. It’s not about personal bests, or proving you belong or playing a great game. Those are great and wonderful parts of sports, when you’re a child or a teenager playing little league or when you’re an out-of-shape, 30-something playing in a beer league.

When you’re at the Olympics, you’re there to win. If you’re not — you’re doing it wrong.

This is a real Canadian athlete after a loss at the Olympics yesterday:

Canadian fencer Sherraine Schalm, ranked fifth in the world, lost 15-13 in the round of 16 of the individual epee to Hungary’s Ildiko Mincza-Nebald.

“It’s like I imagine being a man, it’s like being kicked in the nuts repeatedly, that’s how bad it feels, you feel like you want to curl up and die,” said Schalm, who was devastated by the loss.

Sherraine Schalm, you can play on my team any day.

The rest of you, take a page from the book of a little green puppet: Do or do not. This is the Olympics. There is no fucking ‘try’.

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