Relax, Canada. Exhale. Smoke ’em if ya got
’em. Our pride is intact for the world to see. We shall not go gently into that
good night with nary a medal to show for our trip to the Orient.
Heck, as of early Wednesday morning, we have a
firm grip on twelfth place in the overall medal count. We’re number 12! We’re
number 12! We’re number 12!
Sort of.
In the wheezy air of Olympic status, things
used to be measured with a more blunt instrument, a golden one. Individuals won
medals; countries counted gold. It was an easy equation, tracing its roots back
to the golden age, the time U.S. athletes brought home the lion’s share of gold
and the also-rans divvied up the more base metals. The practice survived the
early days of Olympics as geopolitical chest thumping between the bear and the
eagle and even managed to remain the reluctant gold standard when the “amateur”
athletes from the Soviet army began to nudge the Olympic movement into
full-fledged professional sports.
But losing to an upstart like China is
something else altogether. Inevitable, perhaps, but unpalatable nonetheless.
And so now, in a nod to self-esteem, the rankings are being touted on a total
medals basis, thus allowing — again, as of Wednesday morning — the
U.S. to claim a first-place tie with the host country, notwithstanding the fact
China’s hoarding gold like King Midas while the U.S. is accumulating a very
nice silver service.
But who cares what the superpowers are on
about? Canada’s pride is intact. Oh sure, there might be enough other countries
claiming a tie for 12
th
to cobble together a barbershop quartet, but
who are we to quibble? And while we might, in moments when we indulge ourselves
in another deadly sin — envy — look longingly at the medal count
of, say, South Korea or Ukraine, we can secretly, modestly, bask in the
collective glory of knowing we’re puttin’ the hurt to North Korea, Kazakhstan
and those misguided sheepherders from New Zealand. Oh yeah, baby; take that,
Kiwis.
But really, honestly, deep down in our souls,
is this actually the kind of thing we
want
to be
proud of? I know, it hurts when you’re the only country in the world to host
the Big Show twice and not win a single gold medal before hometown crowds but,
like most disappointments in life, we’ve gotten over it. Of course, we had to
indulge in major retail therapy to salve our wounded pride and we’re still
spending like drunken sailors to make sure it doesn’t happen a third time the
winter after next but we’re coping. It’s not like we’ve started wars, annexed
territory, locked up prisoners of conscience for disagreeing with our sport
strategy or generally slinked off to suck our national thumb.
But maybe, just maybe — I hesitate to be
the voice in the wilderness — we’ve got better things to be proud of. In
fact, in the context of modern Olympism, maybe the whole medal thing is more a
showing of shame than anything else.
Consider, if you will, the cost of China’s not
inconsiderable boast to the world of mounting a whiz-bang Olympics and keeping
most of the gold at home. I’m not referring to the usual things indignant
western journalists have been nitpicking about. It takes a certain kind of
obtuseness to cry foul when an authoritarian government pays lip service to
creating venues for protest but no actual mechanics to allow protestors to get
the necessary permit without being imprisoned for applying. And in western
cultures that kowtow to the cult of airbrushed celebrity, how worked up can we
get about a lip-synching substitute munchkin to replace a girl with an angelic
voice but an overbite you could drive a truck through?
But China’s golden romp is the logical endgame
of a sports strategy that, without burnishing reality too much, enslaves
children for the glory of the motherland. If China employed the same tactics in
the needle trade — and for all I know they might — the world would
be outraged about the country running sweatshops based on forced child labour.
The only reason there is no cry of indignation over the country’s indentured
athletes seems to stem from the fact sport is exempt from the general rules
governing other human endeavour.
Suppose for a moment you were a parent. For
many of you, this isn’t much of a stretch. But suppose your child was enamoured
with, oh, let’s say calligraphy. You might think it was a strange thing to be
smitten by but what the heck, everyone has to sing their own song. You might
gently encourage her interest, check out Calligraphy for Dummies from the
library, buy a starter set of nibs for her birthday and even proudly display
her work on the fridge door.
Now suppose your child began to spend several
hours a day practicing calligraphy, drawing graceful swirls and curlicues until
her fingers cramped and bled, seeking out more esoteric books on the subject,
nattering you to send her to calligraphy camp where she could hone her skills
under the tutelage of the best calligraphers in the world, applying for Canada
Council grants to let her devote all her time to creating invitations and menus
and not be hampered with things like taking on adult responsibilities and
getting a job, striving for perfection and consistency always just out of
reach. As her obsession deepened and all her free time was consumed pushing the
envelope, doing things with pen and paper previously thought impossible, how
would you react?
Most likely you’d pack her off to a shrink.
Unless she wanted to be an Olympic gymnast
instead of a calligrapher.
Sport plays to different rules. So does China.
And a system that enslaves children to become athletes to ensure bragging
rights is nothing to brag about. It sullies an already tarnished endeavour and —
were it anything but sport — should call into question Canada’s mad quest
for Olympic pride and medals.
It’s nice that the Campbell government is
finally taking notice of homelessness. It’s a shame it took a virulent strain
of Olympic pride to bring about action. It’s a mixed blessing the Sea to Sky
highway is finally being brought up to first-world standards. It’s a shame it
took the Olympics to do it and it’s a bigger shame the largesse isn’t spilling
over into other dangerous roads in the province not to mention other
infrastructure that needs repair.
There are a multitude of things Canadians can rightly be proud of. But Olympic pride is false pride and the dough being squandered in pursuit of gold would pay richer dividends if it were spent making sport something every Canadian does for fun, not glory… and not obsessively.