Muscles tense, breath shortens and adrenaline pumps in anticipation of the starting whistle – not just for the athletes, but for viewers enjoying the Olympics, too.
Prior to the Vancouver Games’ opening last week, the event was awash in controversy. The budget for the production was blown, naturally; and protestors raged a variety of Olympic offenses. Even Prime Minister Stephen Harper drew a curious kind of attention to the Games when one of the reasons he cited in proroguing Parliament was to dedicate his focus to them.
But somehow, all that cynicism melts away, like so much British Columbian snow, when we see our nation on parade – and our people being proud of who we are. From all the waving red maple leaf mittens in the crowds at events to the stellar performances by our athletes, to, of course, Alexandre Bilodeau finally breaking our country’s gold medal curse by securing the top spot in the moguls competition on Sunday, it’s impossible for the average Canadian viewer not to be inspired and enchanted by our nation’s possibility.
And that, of course, is the ultimate goal of the Olympics, especially, it seems, for us in the North. As we cuddle under blankets and hibernate in the dead of winter, barred from the outdoors by snow and cold, we can marvel at these athletes who thrive in such harsh conditions. How can the snowboarders cut through snow so well in baggy snowpants? How do the speed skaters not topple over on those close curves? How can those mogul skiers willingly inflict so much damage on their knees?
Years of practice, years of hard work and sacrifice, are, of course, the answers to these rhetorical questions. And, while we’d prefer to keep the purity of sporting pursuits intact, the much-lauded Own the Podium initiative to ensure our athletes get the money they need to succeed has, even at this early stage, gone a long way toward improving our overall rankings.
The Olympic system isn’t a perfect one. Large-scale, international efforts will always be fraught with misbalance – in advantages afforded to athletes in their home nation; in heavy-handed security measures to protect the public and athletes at venues and host cities; in the knowledge that, while some nations can lavishly celebrate the simple joy of sport, others struggle with war, poverty, famine and oppression.
And, even within the games, tragedy can strike. The death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili shows the fine line that many winter sports walk between danger and deftness.
We viewers are all too aware of this. We know the world isn’t a fair place, for any number of reasons. But, for two weeks in February, once every four years, we can suspend our disbelief, not for tales of fiction, but for true tales that have transpired in our national backyard.
Sure, these Olympic Games may not ultimately impact our daily lives, but they provide us with inspiration and an adrenaline rush that’s as close to being in that starting gate as most of us will ever get.
–A.M.
