Sunday, February 28, 2010

Well Said . . . .

This accurately describes my take on today's completed "games" in Vancouver.



'Nuff said . . . .
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4 comments:

MSEH said...

Love that photo!

March 01, 2010 5:01 a.m.
Canada Calling said...

Love IT!!!!!!! We loved seeing you and JoJo! Once in a lifetime experience seeing it all in person. Come to the Island soon (March?)

March 01, 2010 8:58 a.m.
Anonymous said...

Just to clarify -- do you mean that you agree with the statements in the linked article which compare the Vancouver Olympics to the Berlin Olympics in 1936?? It isn't a complimentary article at all.

March 01, 2010 10:13 a.m.
Declan said...

Yeah, I'm with anonymous, are you really agreeing that this Olympics is likely to serve as a prelude to Canada becoming a fascist nation that decides to exterminate its Jewish population in death camps?

I can understand the ra-ra Canada attitude rubbing people the wrong way (as it did me at times, albeit more from folks like Furlough and Harper who seemed to feel that modesty is something you brag about, than from people on the street or most CTV commentators), and I agree that CTV's coverage focussed too much on the Canadian athletes (this was inevitable once they won the rights - CTV has always been a clone of the U.S. networks) but the over the top cynicism in the article, stupid comparisons (comparing ticket sales in the winter olympics to the summer olympics which has 5 times the events, many of which take place in a 80,000 seat stadium) and the Nazi references in particular seem a little extreme.

Personally, I found that with CTV/Sportnet/TSN providing full live coverage of every single event (whether there were any Canadians present or not - see ski jumping for example, or Nordic Combined) I was able to enjoy all the great performances from athletes from around the world, and I didn't really feel that the Vancouver Sun's failure to put Northug on the front page meant that we were about to invade Poland or some such.

Also, I didn't really get a sense that Canadians were unappreciative of the performances of the athletes from other countries. I went to five events and at all of them there was much cheering for all competitors.

The one moment I feared that Canadian fans would embarrass us was when the silver medal was presented to Dale Begg-Smith, the former Vancouverite who left for Australia and who CTV repeatedly showed the footage of dodging the media and declaring that Vancouver 'was not home' even though he grew up here. But even Begg-Smith, the unsmiling internet spam millionaire who left his home city and never looked back, as villainous a villain you could ask for was cheered by the Canadian crowd, both at Cypress and at the medal ceremony at B.C. place.

Not to mention when the mostly Canadian crowd broke into a 'U.S.A. U.S.A.' chant as the U.S. women's hockey team was awarded their silver medals, as a show of respect for their fine performance.

Most Olympics have empty stadiums and grandstands for events that the home team doesn't compete in - Vancouver was actually unique by Winter Olympic standards in that the stands were filled with cheering fans even when there was no Canadian athletes competing.

Maybe I protest too much, but that article doesn't seem like a representation of what I experienced over the last two weeks.

March 01, 2010 9:08 p.m.

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