Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Alta states: Carrying the flame

Does Olympism still exist at the Games?
61232_l

"The modern Games were created to encourage athletic activity, especially among young people, and to promote friendship, fair play, respect for others and other values."

- IOC president Jacques Rogge

 

Everyone put on a happy face now. The press is in town. The VIPs have arrived. The athletes are ready to compete. The Olympic cauldron is about to be lit. Let's celebrate.

I mean, c'mon folks, it's really here. After all the words and all the questions and all the initiatives and all the hard work - after all the hand-wringing and all the name-calling and all the false promises and betrayals - the big moment has finally arrived. Let the Games begin!

So why don't I feel more inspired by the spirit of the thing?

As you read this missive, my 16-year-old daughter Jenna is jogging down Vancouver's 41 st Avenue with the Olympic Torch raised high and a huge smile on her lips. Her dad, on the other hand, is most likely leaking tears again. Subtly of course - trying to make it look like I have a bit of dirt in my eye. Or even an ingrown lash. Whatever.

Funny, you know, after all the tears I've shed recently, I'm still not comfortable with crying in public...

But I just can't help myself. To see this strong, hardy teenager participating in such a public event less than a year after her mom was so brutally snatched from our midst takes my breath away. Indeed, it's a tribute to the resilience of youth.

Ask Jenna how she's doing and you'd never guess by her answer the nightmare she's had to endure these last few months. But I know what she's gone through. Know the pain and anguish that she's lived as a result of losing her mother. I know because we had to live it together, side-by-side, as we struggled to pick up the pieces of our shattered lives.

And I can't help but feel great pride in her strength and self-confidence. But that's not really why I'm crying...

While friends and family gather on the side of the road to cheer Jenna on, I will most likely be thinking of the missing piece in our little domestic puzzle. Where's Wendy? Why isn't she here? Those questions keep popping up in my mind with alarming regularity these days.

I can't shake it. She's the one who should be here. She's the one who nurtured the Olympic spirit in our house. I mean, she would be so happy to see her daughter carrying that torch. It would mean so much to her.

It's just not fair. Always a glass half-full kind of gal, Wend was an Olympic supporter long before most others in town had jumped on the Games bandwagon. Didn't hurt of course when her good pal John Furlong was appointed big boss of VANOC. But for her, it was never about prestige-through-association or "what's in it for me" or "how can I score VIP accreditation?" It was all about celebrating the tenets of Olympism in B.C.

I know. I know. How naïve. But Wendy would just laugh when I'd call her on it.

"I'm not naïve," she'd counter. "I just prefer to look at things from a positive point of view." And then she'd take me to task for being such a sceptic.

"Look at all those kids out there who never play sports," she'd say. "Obesity, ill health - we have the makings of a social disaster on our hands. That's why I support the Olympics. If the Games can help motivate these kids and their parents to take one baby-step forward and get involved in grassroots sports, then we all win!"

And then she'd smile, sending her guileless beam of sunshine my way and slaying all my arguments. "Don't you get that?" she'd say. "Don't you understand how important these Games can be on a cultural level?"

Of course I got that. I just didn't connect the dots in the same way she did.

You see, I grew up in an Olympic household. My bigger-than-life dad, Gabriel, was a member of the historic 1948 Canadian Olympic Team that travelled to London to rekindle the Games' flame after a decade-long interruption due to war. There was an awful lot of optimism in those years. The United Nations was barely two years old and the London Games were seen as yet another opportunity to highlight the fact that "peace" had returned to Europe and the world.

Everyone talked about universalism in those optimistic times. "The bad days are behind us," went the dominant message. All is sunshine ahead...

No one really dwelled on the fact that "the bad guys" - a.k.a. Germany and Japan - had not been invited to attend the august event. Nor were the countries of the Soviet Union there. It was, in essence, the Allies' Games. But you'll rarely see that mentioned in an Olympic history book...

As for Games glamour, forget about it. Battered and beaten after six years of conflict, post-war London was in a feverish re-building phase at that point and finances were tight. "We lived in army barracks," my dad would recount. "There weren't a lot of luxuries. As for food, there wasn't all that much." And then he'd laugh. "It was at the London Games," he'd explain, "that I first tasted whale meat. That was also the last time that I ever ate whale meat."

But his Olympic experience clearly marked him. A kid who had used high-performance sports as a tool to lift himself out of Ottawa's French ghetto, Gabi - as his friends called him - brought up his four sons in lockstep with ol' Baron de Coubertin's Olympic philosophy. And we all thrived under his tutelage.

But this wasn't the cliché version - far from it, in fact.

Don't get me wrong. "Higher, Faster, Stronger" was definitely part of the philosophical mix. But it went much further than that. For Gabi, "healthy mind in healthy body" was the operative phrase. He never believed in one-sport robots or athletic monsters or cheating to get ahead. To him, the process was just as important as the destination. Maybe more. Truly. "Forget winning or losing," he'd say. "It's all about the effort you invest in getting there. It's all about learning what you can really do when you set your mind to it."

How you played the game - the attitude you carried into competition - was far more vital to Gabi than whether or not you'd made it to the top step of the podium. Sadly, it took me years to learn that lesson...

Fortunately for me, however, that process-over-destination concept was hard-wired in my dear departed wife. And I learned a heck of a lot from watching her live her life that way.

A lifelong athlete blessed with a trunk full of natural talent, she never let herself become obsessed with results. A game was only a game to Wend. And though she was known as a fierce competitor, when the ref blew the final whistle that was it. In our nearly 30 years of marriage I never saw her get snitty with an official or trash talk a competitor or badmouth an event. Civil behaviour was sacrosanct to Wendy. Being a sore loser - or an arrogant winner - was the height of rudeness to her.

Which is a long way from our Olympic reality these days. To listen to Canadian politicians and Own The Podium officials, the only thing that matters now is how many medals our countrymen and women will reap by the time the Games are over. And you know that if our athletes don't start off on the right foot and score quickly the media will be over them like a bad rash in July. So sad...

Effort doesn't matter anymore. Fair play be gone. And friendship? That's for losers. Results are all that count now. As for bad behaviour, everything is forgiven if you have a gold medal around your neck. Just ask Canada's hockey players...

Still, I can hear Wendy admonishing me for my current lack of Olympic spirit. "Don't be such a grump," she's saying. "Forget all the negatives and enjoy the Games for what they are. Sure, they're not perfect. But then nothing else is either. We're human. We make mistakes. Deal with it."

And as usual, she's right.

So bring on the Games. Go Canada. Go world. I will do my best to get in the spirit of things. After all, I would never want to disappoint Wendy...