Olympic Musings At The Half

Well, here we are at the halfway point of Vancouver 2010 and I Believe if I hear that CTV theme song one more time I just might take a running leap into an Olympic cauldron.

Catelli said it first, and I will duly echo: CTV, you stink. I realize it's your first time in the Big Time...it should also be your last. It's become a running joke around this here Breadbin that these Olympics don't actually have any sports in them. There's athlete profiles galore (and as I get older I do appreciate those a lot more than I used to)...but then there's Brian Williams, then a rerun of something that happened yesterday, then a promise of a sport, upcoming...then more profiles, more Williams, more reruns...could there be some competition at the end of this tunnel? We've developed our own sport of remote-grabbing. Eva's got five gold medals so far.

You don't know what you had 'til it gets bought out. I posted this in 2004:

The CBC is annoying for entirely different reasons. One different reason is Brian "THE TIME IS....SEVEN MINUTES PAST THE HOUR!" Williams. Brian, a little memo for you: my television has a clock built-in. So does my digital cable box. My old VCR had one; I could be wearing a watch; I could even look outside and guess the time by the position of the sun. I don't need to know what time it is in Athens or in Waterloo. Okay? Okay.
And to the mavens at the CBC: I do not want to watch ONE floor routine in gymnastics, followed by ONE half-inning of baseball, followed by ONE lap of cycling, followed by ONE set of beach volleyball. I know that any child showing signs of being a child nowadays is diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, but I am an adult and I prefer my sports in sensible chunks. Pick a sport (your ratings book or a general poll will tell you which ones are popular) and follow it. Show the 100m staring contest in the breaks. And speaking of breaks, must there be a commercial every ninety seconds? You're a public broadcaster...you shouldn't even need commercials in the first place!

At least Williams has quit it with announcing the time all the time. Twice I've heard him say "coming up next on CBC..." Wince.

There are certain givens every Olympics, magnified because this one's on home soil. One given is that no matter how well Canadians perform, there will echo from sea to sea to sea a veritable half-pipe full of bitchery to the effect that they're not doing well enough. Never mind that we always rake in most of our medals in the second half of the games. Never mind that we've managed to get not one, not two, but three gold medals so far. I had to angrily fend off a woman at work who announced this morning that the Canadian delegation sucked snow. Over two hundred athletes there, she said, and only seven medals? If they don't have a realistic shot at a medal, what the hell are they doing there?

My cousin is an Olympian. Barcelona, 1992: women's field hockey. Her team didn't get very far, but they competed. They competed against the world's best, and she is justifiably proud of that fact, just as I am of her. You can say all you want that the goal is gold, and it is...but finishing fourth--or even twenty-second, or whatever--is an accomplishment. An achievement.

People are still going on about the opening ceremony, and how it had (too much/not enough) French, and (too much/too much) Native content, and you'd never hear this debate in any other country. Personally, I found there was plenty of French: it is, after all, the official language of the IOC. (Note: when I went to Vancouver in 2003, I was amazed to find next to no French anywhere. There's decidedly more Chinese than there is French. In fact, there's nearly more Chinese than there is English. We could have put on Beijing redux!)

And as for Native content, there was exactly one number, which, admittedly, did drag a bit. Oh, really? said another wag at work. What Olympics were you watching? Those dancers just kept on going through the entire parade of athletes! "I wouldn't know", I told the work-wag. "I was actually watching the parade of athletes."

Then there are the folks--and they are legion--who'd rather we not have put on an Olympics at all, given that the estimated billion and a half dollars it cost could have gone to helping the poor and yadda yadda yadda. I have exactly zero patience for this argument. You ever seen a movie in a theater? I ask these folks.

Yeah...

Well, then, shut up.

????

A billion and a half dollars. Hollywood burns through that in, what, a week? Every week of every year. Why aren't they helping the poor, eh, instead of just putting crap on a screen?

As I see it, the Olympics are one of the few events worth spending a billion and a half bucks on. Every time they're on, summer or winter, we see inspiration writ large: stories of heroism and true sportsmanship right before our eyes. We see many examples of the best of humanity...and next to nothing of the worst.

Some of the highlights for me this time 'round, and so far, include:

--Alexandre Bilodeau capturing the first Olympic gold medal ever won by a Canadian in Canada, and making it clear to all the world he did it for his disabled brother, Frederic;

--Christine Nesbitt, trailing badly at the 600m mark of a 1500m skate, suddenly behaving as if a couple of turbojets had ignited, coming all the way back to win gold by two hundredths of a second;

Maelle Ricker, flying through the air with the greatest of ease, on her way to yet another gold for Canada;

--Anya Paerson, capturing bronze for Sweden the day after a horrific crash;

--Shawn White, doing things on a snowboard I still believe are impossible;

--the Canada-Switzerland hockey game. I won't be a traitor and suggest I was rooting for the Swiss, but I do love it when an underdog team throws a scare or worse into a power, even if that power is us. Led by Jonas Hiller, the Swiss played a great game and very well could have won--as they did four years ago. Shut us out that time, too.

More to come. I only wish everyone else was enjoying these Olympics as much as I am.