At the half-way point in the Beijing Olympics Canada still had yet to see a medal. The glaring zeros on the medal tally seemed to suck in enthusiasm and support like three black holes, and the only way to stop it was to win, win, win. The failure of Canadian athletes to medal at these Olympics is easily distracting spectators and athletes alike from the true Olympic – and Canadian – spirit.
The phrase may be tired and used, people as bored with the term Canadian Olympic Spirit as if it were an overplayed Nickleback song, but it still holds a strong truth. The Olympic spirit is supposed to be all about peace, and a showcase of athletic talent. The goal is more to show to the world how well a person performs, as opposed to pitting them against one another in a fight for a medal. Also, isn’t the idea of the Canadian spirit the pure joy of competing with and as one of the world’s greatest athletes, not just against them? If we the spectators consider it to be such, these Olympics have been a great success.
Canadian swimmers have broken national records in the pool since their first stroke, and considering most of us sitting at home aren’t record-holders of any sort, that’s pretty impressive. We have numerous athletes in Beijing who have been recently injured and are barely out of rehab. Kyle Shewfelt is lucky to be walking at this point, with two shattered knees less than a year ago nearly ending his Olympic dreams. His smile at the end of their competition was so far from the expression of a losing athlete that you had to check to see if there was a medal around his neck by accident. Alex Wong, another Canadian gymnast is also still recovering from an Achilles injury recently, and still competed in the men’s all-around individual finals against China’s and Russia’s best.
The idea is to support our athletes in the best performance they can give, not pushing them to the point of – literally – breaking, and then disregarding them if they don’t win.
Even now, eleven days into the games and ten medals up, some viewers are disappointed in what categories Canadians are winning. While trampoline is a very new sport in the summer Olympics, and considered by some to be a silly competition, the medal around Karen Cockburn’s neck weighs just as much as the one around the neck of Simon Whitfield from his epic triathlon.
Maybe now that we have ten medals Canadians are more comfortable just cheering for the sake of cheering, but maybe we shouldn’t get so angry to begin with. Not winning medals isn’t failure unless winning is the athlete’s only goal. That does not go to say that we shouldn’t thirst to be on the top of the podium, we want gold just as much as the athletes in the lanes beside us, but we should be proud of our athletes regardless of where they finish, because when it comes down to it it’s all about them.
The smiles on the faces of Colin Jenkins – who placed in the 50’s in the men’s triathlon – and Rosie MacLennan, who placed seventh in her debut as an Olympic trampolinist, should make the fans cheer just as much as the Canadian anthem blaring from the stadiums in Beijing.
