What a Games, eh? I must have watched twice as many hours of Olympic coverage than I've ever done before (and it certainly wasn't due to the quality of the commentary...). I'm so thankful that Canada was the host nation so that other nations like Britain kept tabs on our athletes as well as their own. We were able to see coverage of almost every competition in which we won gold (or were in contention). Of course, this also meant that we got to watch some of our gold-medal-favourite athletes throw the gold away (women's curling & skeleton -- the 'bob-skeleton' as they call it here -- come to mind). And we even got to watch three medal ceremonies where we won gold.
And then there were our spectacular stats, shown off even more nicely by BBC ranking their nations by the number of gold medals won rather than total medals. As I'm sure everyone knows very well by now, by winning 14 golds, Canada's now won more golds at a Winter Olympics than any other nation ever has. Of course, one needs to take into account the new events that get added every four years, but it is still a great achievement and something I bet we're all proud of. Of course, I'm now wondering if the funding will disappear now that we've had our day and our games. At least the facilities will remain, and Canada's golds will be added to the history books. They were awfully pretty, too, those gold medals.
I can't summarize our experience of the Olympics without mentioning the game. In the days leading up to Sunday BBC was already touting it as a game that, for Canadians, would be the most important one in the past 50 years. And wasn't it spectacular! We were on the edge of our seats when the USA tied it up with less than 25 seconds to go. 25 seconds! We should have had those golds safely in our hands! But no, we all had to sit through a depressing end of the period, BBC's 'analysis' of the game so far (I should mention that instead of Ron Maclean and Don Cherry, we had a Canadian skier (their token Canadian for the entire Games), a British track athlete as host, and a British rower who said he'd 'seen some games'), and then another 7 minutes before Crosby saved the day and our men's team's reputation. We were shouting in celebration, but only temporarily, as we were watching with American friends who were anything but thrilled with the outcome.
As our little party finished and we were on our own again, I found myself in tears for only the second time since the Games had begun. Everything in me was telling me that I should have been home, shouting and celebrating with everyone else as part of a nation who'd just earned the greatest prize we could in our Winter Olympics: the double gold in hockey. Friends here said they felt the same way. We watched as Facebook's status updates from both sides of the Atlantic celebrated the victory, and each of ours did, too. I was noticeably happy the next morning in tutorial and told my students all about it (I think only my 3 American students had watched the game). I'd teased them a bit the week before in my Thursday class, reminding them that the hockey game would be on at 8pm the night before their essays were due so that they should be sure to factor that into their writing schedules, knowing that maybe 1 or 2 would even know what I was talking about. One of my students did tell me that Canadian students had poured out of the pubs on George Street over in New Town after the game finished, shouting and singing and celebrating the victory, so that's pretty cool.
All that was left was the closing ceremonies, which were on too late for us to watch live, so watched them on Monday afternoon. I loved the opening of them, making fun of the torch not rising properly from the ground, and giving our fourth torchbearer the chance to light her leg of the torch. I thought Neil Young's acoustic performance while the fire went out was lovely. We were excited to see Alanis Morisette, and I agreed with the BBC commentator's surprised sentiments that Avril Lavigne wasn't going to sing Sk8ter Boy. We felt bad for Catherine O'Hara who got next to no laughs, and were so happy to see Michael J. Fox! Personally, I thought the giant beavers, inflatable moose and sexy mountie ladies dancing around Micheal Buble on a giant mountie hat was pretty darn funny, although I suppose we just have to hope that the larger international audience gets that it really was a joke, and that that's not what Canada really is.
BBC wasn't always the most polite in their discussion of the Canadian athletes, and seemed to harp on our 'Own the Podium' program quite a bit as the golds continued to come in. They would comment on how Canadians showing that they really want to win just isn't very Canadian, and that our reluctance to give extra practice runs to foreign athletes beyond the required practice time was unfair to their British athletes. When the two married British skeleton medal hopefuls came in far from the medals, both whined to the BBC about not being allowed enough practice time on such a demanding track. However, the women's competition was won by the second British athlete who said she loved the track (and whom BBC had completely discounted in the run up to the Games) while the Canadian favourite with 'hundreds more practice runs' had bombed. They were also really upset when a British short-track speed skater was disqualified (for twice knocking over the Canadian skater next to her by skating directly into her after the gun went off), and managed to bring up this 'unfair' disqualification at various times throughout the rest of the Games. Regardless, the Games wrapped up with us feeling even more proud to be Canadian, a phenomenon I'm sure that was stirred up in the minds of Canadians around the world.
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