Sporting success and brash patriotism

A Canadian about to lose her cool

CANADIANS used to think of themselves as being quiet, modest and unassertive. No longer. After their athletes topped the medals table with 14 golds at the winter Olympic games, some 100,000 flag-waving locals took to the streets of Vancouver and the nearby ski resort of Whistler, deliriously singing the national anthem. The crowning triumph had come with victory over the United States in the men’s ice-hockey final. Even though this mood of brash patriotism had been building steadily both before and during the games, it took outsiders and even some Canadians by surprise.

The Vancouver Olympics got off to a dreadful start. Early on the opening day, a Georgian athlete, Nodar Kumaritashvili, was killed during a practice run when his luge flipped over, throwing him into a steel pole and raising questions about the track’s safety. Foreign journalists pounced on a series of glitches. The Olympic torch did not burn properly during the opening ceremony, an ice-making machine broke down as did several buses, and unseasonably mild weather caused events to be postponed. Visitors to Vancouver were frustrated that the outdoor Olympic flame was cordoned off behind a chain-link fence (it was quickly opened up). “The worst games ever,” wrote a columnist in The Guardian, a British newspaper, much to the annoyance of Canadians.

They weren’t. And they got better and better, especially for home fans. At the previous two Olympics held on their soil, Canadians had failed to win a single gold medal. Their success this time stemmed from a programme to finance athletes’ preparation and training, called “Own the Podium” and organised by the Canadian Olympic Committee five years ago. It had a budget of C$117m ($104m), raised from government and business, and it worked—although the Americans finished first in the overall medal count.

This hard-nosed approach irritated some foreign athletes, who had less chance to practise at the facilities than did their Canadian rivals. The jingoistic mood may have added to the pressure on Canadian athletes, but Canadian success created an infectious public enthusiasm for the games on the streets of Vancouver, which impressed visiting officials from the 2012 London Olympics.

Canadian success also inspired an outpouring of national pride that is unusual in a fissiparous country often seemingly racked by self-doubt. Whether the games have succeeded in rebranding Canada as a modern, youthful sporting power, as some of the organisers apparently hoped, remains to be seen.

Now the bills will fall due. Last year Vancouver city council bailed out the developers building the Olympic village, because the softening of the property market made it hard to sell flats there. The Canadian Olympic Committee faces a $22m shortfall for “Own the Podium”, and the federal government has declined to stump up more. Two decades ago 50% of Canadian adults took part in sport of some kind. Now the figure is only 30%, and obesity rates are rising. Perhaps Canada was just renting the podium.