Log Cabin Chronicles Fred Ryan's column Canada isn't winning? Stop bitching

LOG CABIN CHRONICLES

Canada isn't winning? Stop bitching

FRED RYAN
Posted 08.20.08

AYLMER, QUEBEC | Canada isn't winning?

Allow me my two cents on the Beijing Olympics. These Games have probably created the largest group of armchair quarterbacks since the term was coined.

For the first half of the Games, Canadians with access to a microphone were sure we wanted to know of their profound disappointment in our team and athletes. Now, with medals of the second half, the carping has slowed, but there's a lot of complaining. This might be a lasting accomplishment of these Games: they have us talking about national policy and national support for sports in general.

First, I want to remind viewers that we are watching the finest athletes of the world do their best in many extremely difficult tests. That is the purpose of the Games, to pursue the ultimate performance at a race, a technique, a dive, a game . . . not the biggest pile of medals for my country.

Originally, the Games were not designed to keep national tallies at all. The Games were the athletes' accomplishments, not a nationalistic scorecard. Originally, too, only amateur athletes could participate, and any hint of accepting money for a performance was equal to today's alarm about drugs.

The American swimmer who will likely go home a millionaire for winning over six gold medals would have been tossed from the Games during their first hundred years. Maybe the World Trade Organization got hold of the Games without anyone noticing, and turned them into advertising and sponsorship opportunities, not exceptional sport.

Times change. Today we wouldn't blink an eye if Karl Heinz Schrieber handed triathlon champion Simon Whitmore an envelope full of money for winning silver, instead of giving it to Mulroney and getting everyone in big trouble. But we do talk a lot about the success or failure of medal-based funding programs, and about the lack of facilities for high-level training in sports other than hockey, football, and baseball.

This is a good result of the Games, getting us talking about sport in a constructive way. Next thing you know, we'll be talking about the health and fitness of Canadians.

The Games also get people out of the mindset that hockey, football, and baseball are all that exist.

Imagine if our profound concern over our country's weak showing on the medal podium every four years translated into accepting school taxes for good gyms in all our schools. Imagine if television sports shared their hockey-football exclusivity with gymnastics and swimming.

Imagine if track and field and weight lifting were significant high school sports. Imagine if boxing, judo, fencing, and cycling appeared regularly in local tournaments and in media coverage.

Imagine if the sportswriters, who know the exact ratio of hits earned to earned outs for every baseball player since Babe Ruth, knew even the names of women volleyball players or the average distance of a good shotput toss.

Imagine.

We are witnessing splendid human accomplishment. Most of us will never once rouse ourselves to such challenges. We should be more charitable, and much more appreciative to our athletes. They are incredible human beings.