Watching the Olympics has been a sad-happy proposition. Since our entire family is American and Canadian (except me awaiting final approval as Canadian citizen), we want to see the US and Canada do really well. Course, US is doing great, and it's so fun to watch. Who isn't in awe of Michael Phelps and company (basketball, gymnastics, volleyball and more). With 46 medals as of today, US leads the medal count (China leads the gold count). But Canada, Oh Canada (new intonation), is struggling. So much so, the journalists covering the Canadian team are receiving words of sympathy from journalists from other countries. 332 athletes. No medals yet. It hurts. Cam Cole, one of the main sports writers out of Vancouver, just posted this report. Really well written; great blend of humor, reality, self-deprecation and maybe a tinge of anger. It's a great read and captures the angst of us in Canada.
Woe Canada: Summer Olympains Trending Downward - By Cam Cole, Vancouver Sun
BEIJING - They are streaming by in increasing numbers now, the foreign journalists.They look at us anxiously, as we sit in our little Canadian writing enclave in the Main Press Centre or one of the athletic venues, to see how we're taking it. Should they say something solicitous? Should they make a little joke, to break the ice? Or just tiptoe past, trying not to make eye contact?
Some, like my Aussie buddy Robert, dispense with the diplomacy.
"Have you still not won a medal?" he asks.
"Nope."
"How many athletes do you have here?"
"Uh, 332."
"And no medals," he says. "Well, that's a stunning display of ineptitude, isn't it?"
The Americans are starting to take pity on us.
I have told as many as I can that they should stop asking, and when we pass one another, if they see me make a circle of my thumb and forefinger, they should not take it as the international sign for "perfect" but as the international sign for "zero."
Some are even starting to write about us, like Filip Bondy of the New York Daily News who was bemoaning in his blog the other day the fact that his colleague Wayne Coffey was taking off for home before the closing ceremonies, leaving Bondy to mop up all the news of the final day.
"If only I were Canadian, I could leave early too," he wrote. "I could leave today."
That was tongue-in-cheek, by the way. He meant it in the nicest possible way.
The Americans complain because they're running themselves ragged going from venue to venue to catch up with gold-medal-winning athletes, and are exhausted at the end of each day from arm-wrestling one another over who had the best angle. We get back to the Media Village after the daily dose of "I was strong but my opponent was stronger" quotes from Canadian athletes, and wonder how many ways we can split up a medal if one ever happens.
Jere Longman, who's been covering amateur sports with eloquence for a very long time, is assembling statistics and sad-sack tales of our national goose-egg for a piece in the New York Times. He found fertile territory at the Water Cube this week in the fact that Canada's swim team hasn't won a medal in eight years or an individual gold since Mark Tewksbury's 100m backstroke in 1992. Or a track and field medal since 1996.
U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps alone had won six gold medals by Friday, equalling the entire output of the Canadian Olympic team, all sports combined, from the 2000, 2004 and 2008 Games.
"Fourth is the new bronze," a Toronto reporter explains, after Canada's Mike Brown is nipped for the bronze medal by a finger's length in the 200-metre breaststroke.
"The French scribes call it (italics) la médaille chocolat (end italics)," Chris Clarey of the International Herald Tribune offers helpfully. Like the gold foil-wrapped chocolate medals you can buy at the store.
"You guys still tied with Blankistan?" someone asks.
My USA Today pal Mike Lopresti, a mild-mannered Canuck-o-phile who even likes curling, is far too polite to make inquiries as to the state of our shutout, but every now and then he will raise a curious eyebrow and I will shake my head, and no words need be exchanged.
I have told him that our archer, Jay Lyon, who finished 10th, trains in a golf dome in Winnipeg, and pays for most everything out of his own pocket. And that our lone boxer, Adam Trupish, stepped into the ring at the Beijing Games having not fought in nearly a year. He lost 20-1 to a guy from Kazakhstan.
These are the athletes we send to the Games, expecting them to uphold our honour against countries that actually pour serious money into coaching and training and fine-tuning their Olympians. Whose fans back their expectations, in other words, with tax dollars.
We send table tennis players who never go anywhere to compete, then get to the Olympics and try to beat the Chinese. We send a water polo team that loses its first three games by an aggregate of 36-11, including a 12-0 shutout by Montenegro, the newest fully-recognized sovereign state in the world and a country of some 5,000 square miles, or roughly an eighth the size of Newfoundland. We send a kayaker who has to train with an Irish paddler in order to get training money - from the other guy's country.
We spend days at the Water Cube, hearing impassioned speeches from Swimming Canada CEO Pierre Lafontaine, pleading for us to understand the massive strides his swimmers have made in the four years since their shockingly-bad performance in Athens. Mounds of Canadian records and personal bests here in their new Speedo swimsuits, and eight finals made compared with just three in Athens, which is probably the real yardstick that tells you they're inching closer.
But who, back home, understands inching?
Does it get to us? Sure, there is plenty of black humour in the press room, but deep down, we all wish they would do well, so we'd have something to write other than someone finishing 41st and telling us what an amazing experience it was and how proud he or she is.
No one comes off the Olympian fields saying, "Boy, did I stink." Everyone has had a wonderful time here, been treated like gold ... and won the Miss Congeniality award.
Even the Canadian Olympic Committee, which came into these Games optimistic of a top-16 finish in total medals, is creaking under the weight of expectations, including ours. The so-called "Flash Quotes" from Canadian athletes competing at far-flung venues were still arriving hours late as of Thursday, and a complaint about the delay was answered: "We're doing the best we can. We're sorry it's not good enough."
As a motto for our Olympics, that would serve quite nicely.
We have hopes, however. That the rowers are going to end the shutout this weekend, and then things will pick up. We're a second-week team, after all. The Prime Minister says so.
It's true. If I had a nickel for every time the COC has had to call a crisis-management press conference at the halfway point of a Games to reassure a panic-stricken nation that all is not lost, I'd have ... let's see, 12 Olympics, times five ... 60 cents!
Most of the time, we do make a modest comeback. Although it's getting more modest with each passing Summer Olympics.
We are, as the analysts would say, trending downward.
Of the 205 countries competing in Beijing, we stood tied for 53rd in medals after seven days of competition.
It was a 153-way tie, mind you. There's only one way to go from here.
RichKao