I always look forward to the Olympics. I love the idea of competitions on a national scale, in sports that I am rarely exposed to otherwise. It’s always a great couple weeks, and I absolutely get caught up in it.
The Vancouver Olympics though seem to be somewhat bi-polar for us Canadians though. It’s a Games full of exciting highs (the first Canadian Gold on Canadian Solo) and bitterly disappointing lows (yesterday’s Hockey loss to the USA). What I find great though is that we aren’t being blown out in the events that we don’t take a medal in. If you notice there is usually a Canadian athlete in the top 5 of any given sport, and that just tells me that we’re in there and we’re competing, and not rolling over.
Some would say that’s just encouraging mediocrity, but hey, we are Canadian after all.
Overall Canada sits 4th in the medal standings. I think that’s pretty respectable, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the remaining days of the Games play out.
The Men’s Hockey game yesterday was really hard to watch. One of the greatest goaltenders ever to put on pads was scrambling around like he was back in PeeWee hockey. When your team out-shoots the other team 44-22 and ends up losing by one goal, it’s a frustrating thing. Fortunately, we’re not totally out of it yet, and hopefully we can pull it together against Germany, and bring about our own Miracle On Ice against Russia.
There’s so much pressure on these guys to perform on an international stage that I almost feel sorry for them. Then I remember the stacks of money they’ll be returning to after the Olympics, and I suddenly don’t feel so bad.
