 |
     |
|
|
Every four years I get sucked into watching the Olympics. Yes, every FOUR years because unlike most Canadians, I CAN tear myself away from the box for the winter version (although I do like watching the sports that create speed through unmediated sliding down a hill). And, every four years I watch and half-heartedly, in a purely localized fashion, participate in the most recent round of national hand-wringing. "Why don't we win more medals? What can we do to earn more medals?" etc., until we eventually end up in a painful examination of the Canadian psyche. It's draining and demoralizing on so many levels.
The title of the post comes from the name of a group that caused a tremendous ruckus back at the end of the 80s when Toronto was making its first bid for a summer games. As you might expect, given their name, this was not a support group. Their mission was to prevent the bid committee from completing its work and save money that would have been diverted to hosting the Games (circus) for good works, homeless and hungry people, etc. (bread). They weren't successful: Toronto lost fair and square after making a proper bid. Whether any of the money that would have been spent made anyone's life at the edge better is anyone's guess. I doubt it. Well, this and other such organizations have nothing to fear in the latest debate on funding athletes to shore up our lagging competitiveness. As this G&M represents, "No new money for Olympians."
I wish to weigh in as a matter of personal catharsis. So . . .
I hate to lose and I hate to be uncompetitive. If you're going to compete, then there is only modest consolation in being "among the best," which is what the also-rans have to hang on to when they're staring at the medal podium from the grandstand. We are the world's best sports because, in our own inimitable Canadian fashion, we sanctify the well-wishing high-minded deportment of the also-ran. (We're pretty good winners, too.) So I am bothered by the collective consoling we do with and to each other every time we're shut out or "hit under our weight.
Lest anyone think I've gone to the other side and joined the jingo-istic American competitive crew which has to overcome not winning everything and point out (at least on the network broadcasts) why, despite losing, everyone was concerned or threatened by, had to watch out for, or nearly lost to the American athlete(s). It was punishing to watch NBC's coverage of the American that was literally out of the race with insipid voice-over telling us how, if only there had been another ten metres or if the day had been windier, or whatever, then this also-ran would have been the one to beat. That driven win-or-nothing attitude -- and worse, behaviour -- is at once romantic and debilitating. It cannot appreciate the joys of both winning and of losing. Yes, there is also joy in losing (so long as it's not all the time). No I'm not there either.
But in Canada, our trouble is that we do punch under our weigh in many things, which in the current context means sports (save hockey), and we neither like it nor want to do anything about it. For 19 days in August and a few weeks after, some will stand on their hind legs and moan about how we're not funding sports enough to win. The implication being that not winning in international, amateur sporting competition is somehow a terrible thing. By mid-September, I predict, we will again have forgotten the situation what with the World championships of hockey being nearly over, parliament back in session, and concern over the hockey season (and its impact on our ability to field PROFESSIONALS in the coming Turin winter Olympics. And it won't come up again until winter 2006.
That doesn't solve the problem though. More money won't solve the problem. I think that Mark Tewkesbury (among others) is accurate: there is enough money to do better. It's just not being used well enough. Of course the American athletes -- and others probably -- are being paid and supported in greater wealth. So what. Take away the performance enhancers that it can buy and travel it can afford, and what does that have to do with natural ability and good coaching? We just like to bitch, and money is a good place to start -- and stop, apparently.
Much has been written recently, in certain editorial quarters, about the Canadian default position which one columnist portrayed in an apocryphal description of Sommerset Maugham: the very best of the second class. We are generally, say some, most comfortable, at the top of the second level. Rather than commit to the very top of the competitive pile where it is geometrically more difficult to move up one rung and therefore inversely likely to be defeated, we tend toward splendid mediocrity. Maybe so: if one reads a cross section, there would appear to be ample examples from many sectors, not just sport.
That is the problem for the elite athletes that do rise to the top. Where they have the opportunity to rise to the top because of solid and supportive infrastructure (club level programming, I'm told), they are often left in the lurch when they become as good as we can get in Canada. By which I mean, rather than give further support to those athletes that are, in fact, the best that we can field so that they will be the best the world has to offer, we as a nation seem to believe -- if actions bely words -- that's good enough. Except for hockey it seems, the drive to be best in the world does not have enough support except in these brief and shining moments of Olympic days to overcome a satisfaction with being best in Canada.
The missing link in logic is that for the best in Canada to be the best in the world (or near it), then Canada must be ranked among the very top of the world's offerings -- in whatever. Paradoxically, in order to be in that enviable position where the best in the country is equally likely to be the best in the world, the nation has to field and support more athletes in the realm of international events where they can become the best in the world. That, I would presume, will cascade down into the developmental programs at club levels, universities, etc., so that the internal competition is global "level." That requires planning, some money, focus, determination, support, and incomplaisancy.
I suspect such a situation would take us as a country and as a people beyond our level of satisfaction. And there, as any economist will tell you, the marginal returns (to our sense of self in this case) diminish. So, I'll watch the Games again in two and four and six years . . . in our national sporting version of Groundhog Day.
Posted by Grayson at August 30, 2004 05:07 PM