Man in Tweed dot Com

Reflections on Vancouver 2010

This post was written by Mike

As a Canadian, the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games will forever be etched in my mind as something special. I make no claims that it has changed our nation or that we will henceforth be seen in a different light by the nations of the world. Moments are fleeting, memories fade, life returns to its cycles of boredom and excitement. But no matter how the world turns out, we will have stilled experienced something as a nation unlike anything else that has come before us. This was the perfect storm of nationalism, sporting pride, and media presence. We could, for the most part, watch whatever sport we wished to watch. For the more technologically oriented we could watch whatever sport we wished to watch whenever and wherever we wished to watch it.

Despite what happens next, despite the next few weeks of doldrums that come from a hangover, despite the comparative boredom that will be our lives as we return to our daily routine we have lived through something special.

The ever-bouncing Marianne St-Gelais will forever be Canada’s Sweetheart. Joannie Rochette will always be our heartbroken darling who’s sorrow touched us all. Alex Bilodeau will always be our kindhearted and amazing younger brother. Jon Montgomery will be our crazy friend who slides down a mountain headfirst, celebrates by chugging a pitcher of beer and wants to do it all again tomorrow. Sidney will always be our hero.

Aside from our national memories, there are personal ones I hope to recall in years to come:

• k.d. Lang coming out of relative obscurity (at least to me) to sing the most hauntingly beautiful rendition of the song ‘Hallelujah’ that I have ever heard.
• Watching every run of the men’s and women’s moguls to the point where I gasped at the very same moment as the television commentator when we realized the final skier missed his jump and Alex had won gold
• Marianne St-Gelais bouncing everywhere she went and the Chinese skater Meng Wang who won gold congratulating her with a hug
• Thinking the South Korean speed skater Lee Ho-Suk will be lucky to make it back to Korea without being flayed alive
• Hearing my wife say she would disqualify him for being a dick in the B finals just before the officials disqualified him for being a dick in the B finals
• Being glued to long-track speed skating as every moment surpassed the previous one as the most compelling moment thus far
• Rod Black, Jamie Salle and David Pelletier mocking the figure skating outfits
• Watching Simon Ammann winning double gold in ski-jumping for a second straight time

The final memory, however, I will take away is not The Goal, it is not the sense that we have finally found a way to express our inherent nationalism, it is not even that we showed the world that we are one big crazy party. My final memory is watching us make fun of the fact that our opening ceremony failed and then the unbelievable sense of pride while watching Catriona Lemay Doan get her chance to light the flame and share in the moment that was denied her. That, to me, was our enduring moment. We did not say “it’s just one of those things” and silently move on. We mocked ourselves, fixed it, and looked right in the eyes of everyone in the world who said we don’t know how to run things, that we made the Olympics a joke, that we failed as a county and a host and told the to fuck off.

Be happy Canada. We just showed the world how to run an Olympic Games. And we beat their ass doing it.