Unsatisfied
So, it appears that our week-long national nightmare has come to an end and Canada has finally won a few medals at the Beijing Olympics. Now that Canada has proven its superiority in 48 kg women's wrestling, demonstrated its second-bestiness in pairs rowing, and covered itself in bronze in 55 kg women's wrestling, maybe some of the hand-wringing can come to an end.
I haven't actually heard a single person I know complain about Canada's performance at the Olympics, yet I keep hearing about this nationwide sense of disappointment. Where is all of this negativity coming from?
Al Strachan's landlady (and Globe and Mail columnist) Christie Blatchford gives us a hint:
But that said, if you haven't read it already, you will; if it's not in your newspaper this morning, odds are it will be soon.
As predictable as death and taxes, every Olympics features the traditional "Canada chokes" story.
Hmmm.
Could it be?
Mittenstringers!
We all know that the reporters and columnists who cover the local sporting clubs have an annoying habit of projecting their own feelings on to the fans, and then belittling the fans for said feelings. You know, "stupid Leafs fans think Leafs will win cup, aren't they stupid"...it's Berger-by-Numbers. Well, with so many of the same reporters off to China to cover the Olympics, it is no wonder that we are seeing the same sort of stories about the 200 metre breaststroke and doubles tennis.
I mean, a Mittenstringer is always ready to ask the tough questions, whether its of a multimillionaire defencemen who scored on his own net in overtime, or an unknown amateur athlete who struggled near-poverty for years only to lose their one-shot at Olympic glory because it just wasn't their day.
My Globe and Mail colleague Matthew Sekeres describes being at an event where a young Canadian athlete was asked why she'd failed, and reacted with "a look like her puppy had died." Dawn Walton of The Globe's Calgary bureau was at the fencing hall when Sherraine Schalm, who lost in her first round to a lower-ranked fencer, was asked how she felt and said, "You feel like you want to curl up and die ... You train so long, and I feel like I disappointed myself, my coach, my family, my country, everybody."
Egad. Not only have these athletes suffered great disappointment on the world-stage, they now have Steve Simmons and Rosie "Rickles" DiManno in their face asking them why they failed and if they know how disappointed everyone is back in Canada. That ain't no picnic.
Of course, this always brings us back to the tired old story about the lack of funding for our Olympic athletes. As C-Blatch puts it:
...if Canadians want lots of Olympic medals, they will have to pay for them. While funding for athletes in Canada has increased in recent years, it remains a fraction of what is spent by the nations reaping all the gold, silver and bronze here, and athletes in less popular or more obscure sports still often pay some, or nearly all, of their own expenses.
Well, I'm sorry, but there are thousands and thousands of people in this country who don't get their dreams funded by the Canadian taxpayer. Many actors, musicians, writers and artists struggle along without a lot of government support. Federal and Provincial governments have spent the last decade and a half slashing social services so that many people can't even achieve their dream of having a fucking roof over their heads and food in their bellies.
Most egregiously, Till and I have long dreamed of giving up our day jobs and dedicating ourselves full-time to Pub Lunch, our cover band that only plays songs by the lesser-lights of mid 90's BritPop: Menswear, Gene, Sleeper, Shed Seven and many other forgotten also-rans. Unfortunately, this seems to matter about as much as fencing and kayaking, and Pub Lunch stumbles along without funding.
Thanks for nothing, Canada.
I haven't actually heard a single person I know complain about Canada's performance at the Olympics, yet I keep hearing about this nationwide sense of disappointment. Where is all of this negativity coming from?
Al Strachan's landlady (and Globe and Mail columnist) Christie Blatchford gives us a hint:
But that said, if you haven't read it already, you will; if it's not in your newspaper this morning, odds are it will be soon.
As predictable as death and taxes, every Olympics features the traditional "Canada chokes" story.
Hmmm.
Could it be?
Mittenstringers!
We all know that the reporters and columnists who cover the local sporting clubs have an annoying habit of projecting their own feelings on to the fans, and then belittling the fans for said feelings. You know, "stupid Leafs fans think Leafs will win cup, aren't they stupid"...it's Berger-by-Numbers. Well, with so many of the same reporters off to China to cover the Olympics, it is no wonder that we are seeing the same sort of stories about the 200 metre breaststroke and doubles tennis.
I mean, a Mittenstringer is always ready to ask the tough questions, whether its of a multimillionaire defencemen who scored on his own net in overtime, or an unknown amateur athlete who struggled near-poverty for years only to lose their one-shot at Olympic glory because it just wasn't their day.
My Globe and Mail colleague Matthew Sekeres describes being at an event where a young Canadian athlete was asked why she'd failed, and reacted with "a look like her puppy had died." Dawn Walton of The Globe's Calgary bureau was at the fencing hall when Sherraine Schalm, who lost in her first round to a lower-ranked fencer, was asked how she felt and said, "You feel like you want to curl up and die ... You train so long, and I feel like I disappointed myself, my coach, my family, my country, everybody."
Egad. Not only have these athletes suffered great disappointment on the world-stage, they now have Steve Simmons and Rosie "Rickles" DiManno in their face asking them why they failed and if they know how disappointed everyone is back in Canada. That ain't no picnic.
Of course, this always brings us back to the tired old story about the lack of funding for our Olympic athletes. As C-Blatch puts it:
...if Canadians want lots of Olympic medals, they will have to pay for them. While funding for athletes in Canada has increased in recent years, it remains a fraction of what is spent by the nations reaping all the gold, silver and bronze here, and athletes in less popular or more obscure sports still often pay some, or nearly all, of their own expenses.
Well, I'm sorry, but there are thousands and thousands of people in this country who don't get their dreams funded by the Canadian taxpayer. Many actors, musicians, writers and artists struggle along without a lot of government support. Federal and Provincial governments have spent the last decade and a half slashing social services so that many people can't even achieve their dream of having a fucking roof over their heads and food in their bellies.
Most egregiously, Till and I have long dreamed of giving up our day jobs and dedicating ourselves full-time to Pub Lunch, our cover band that only plays songs by the lesser-lights of mid 90's BritPop: Menswear, Gene, Sleeper, Shed Seven and many other forgotten also-rans. Unfortunately, this seems to matter about as much as fencing and kayaking, and Pub Lunch stumbles along without funding.
Thanks for nothing, Canada.
Amen, Kim. AMEN.
Full disclosure: I was actually drafting my next Galk-fest for Cox Bloc on this very subject. I think I'll still get it in sometime this week. But we are definitely on the same page here.
Which other country's media would take a 28th-ranked athlete and call him a goddamned loser for finishing fourth in the entire world? Which other country's media would assume that a neat, tidy homeless-to-kayakers reallocation of resources will cause all of the world's athletes to roll over and concede the gold to freaking Canada?
Only the mittenstringers, of course. "Egad" is right.
Thanks Varry. I've seen some stories criticizing Canadians for only caring about these sports every four years. In my case, that is pretty much true. However, it is good to see that even though the Mittenstringers also only pay attention to these sports every four years, they can still be just as wrong as they are about the sports they normally cover.
I look forward to your next piece. Send it to the coxbloc email when it is finished, and drop us a note here reminding us to check our inbox.
Cheers.
I dunno...
On the one hand, you're right that there are more important things to spend money on than sports. But your complaints sound a lot like people's complaints about, say, spending money on the space program when there are plenty of problems right here on Earth. A couple of responses to what is essentially the same problem:
1) That you're ignoring very real spinoff benefits. The space program has given us all sorts of technological advances, from velcro to satellite TV. And putting money into sports programs will, arguably, lead to a healthier population as access to high-quality facilities and training becomes easier/more affordable. Plus the idea that successful athletes (i.e., athletes that can afford to work on their athletics instead of dropping out to man the cappuccino machine) can be role models, encouraging kids to participate in physical activities that even go beyond Wii Sports. If there had been a high-profile, successful triathlete like Whitfield when I was a kid, maybe I'd have gotten interested in any or all of running, swimming, biking, even triathlonning, instead of being solely interested in the various iterations of Mortal Kombat and the consumption of bacon.
2) That it's an either/or situation with respect to where the money goes. The Canadian government runs a multi-billion-dollar surplus. It's not like there isn't enough money to house the homeless. We can fund both subsidized high-level athletics and affordable housing, if either of those were at all on the radar of the government when the budget's being drawn up. It's not like the government is sitting there with a calculator come budget time, saying "well, we can either subsidize the training of X number of amateur athletes, or we can feed Y number of homeless people, hmm, which do we choose?" And you know, even if money was that tight, do you really think in a million billion years that if all sport funding was cancelled, that any of that money would go to social programs? Not when the Conservatives have attack ads, corporate tax cuts, and mistresses to pay for.
Hey Bim,
Some good points, but I would like to point out that the 'spin off benefits' of success at elite sports is negligible, and rec money would be much better spent encouraging all Canadians to take part in some type of sport or exercise.
The States dominates at every Summer Games, and they're not exactly the model of national fitness I'd want Canada to follow.
And Sub-Zero and Rayden ruled.
Rayden? Really? Do not anger Scorpion.
Anyway, while it's true that the US has been the Summer Games powerhouse (though I guess China is now, not that we should emulate THEIR national programs either), per capita Canada does way better... I'm just saying.
But I think the spinoffs are better than you think. More money for, say, a world-class gymnastics facility would mean that they could buy more equipment and hire more coaches, which means they can take on more young gymnasts, open more spaces in their rec program, and launch that "Gymnastics@School... Fitnezz 2 da Xtreme!" program they'd like to have done already but couldn't because they didn't have the staff or equipment, which gets lots of kids active, and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to extrapolate that to a healthier general population over time, especially if we assume that other amateur sport organizations get to suckle from the teat a little as well, so kids of all interests can find something to participate in.
Doesn't it suck that kids can't play sports because their parents can't afford to register them? Well, if Hockey Canada (or Gymnastics Canada or Jai Alai Canada) got more money, they could not only keep their elite athletes afloat (well OK, hockey's a bad example), but they do sponsor rec programs too, and I'd think these expenses come out of more or less the same pot. Meaning that giving amateur sports organizations more money helps not only the Olympian athletes, but the the kids taking lessons, or in house leagues, or whatever. And isn't that a good thing?
I write too much.