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The fallacy of Olympic pride

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.
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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.