As I write this I'm coming off a hockey-induced high resulting from our boys' narrow 3-2 win over Slovakia tonight. This is what Canada is made of and what hockey and Olympic competition are truly about.
I think it's safe to say most every Canadian held their breath for the entire third period after the Slovaks came back from a 3-0 deficit to score 2 goals and come within striking distance of tying the game. Watching Canadian goalie Roberto Luongo anxiously check the clock and count down the last three minutes, I felt I was right there with him, facing those shots our defense left him open to. For the most part of the match, our boys made Canada proud, save for the last 10 minutes of the game.
It was really a match that got Canadians back on the track of actually thinking about and debating the sport we were involved in, not this fluffy, trivial stuff about the women's hockey team lighting up a celebratory cigar and downing some champagne after their gold medal win. The only thing they did wrong was underestimate the vulture-like, profit-driven mindset of a few hack photographers left in the arena after the game. Or the fact that some team's pitiful souls settled for silver or bronze.
The people who are pitiful IMHO are not those who competed and snagged a medal of any colour or even competed on Canada's world stage (something 99.9 per cent of the rest of us will never come close to doing).
As a reporter I am shamed to see what an obsession with ratings and an ever-enduring negative outlook can do to our profession. Endless headlines regarding athletes 'losing gold' or 'settling' for silver or bronze abound. But what is not in great supply is common sense, such as is displayed by Michael Den Tandt's column, 'TV takes gold in negativity at the Olympics' in the St. Catharines Standard.
Den Tandt writes:
"There's a simple explanation for the torrent of foolish and negative questions that have greeted athlete after Canadian athlete who failed, for one reason or another, to own the podium. Ready? Here it is. There is no news at the Olympics. Don't misunderstand me. Of course it's huge. Of course there's massive and overwhelming viewer interest, worldwide and especially here at home...But...there's a first, second and third place finisher...Hard news is about the unexpected. In a sporting event, often the only potential surprise is the contrast between expectation and reality. Hence the endless puerile quizzing of perceived stars who failed to win a medal, or failed to win a gold medal. Are you sad? Are you mad? How do you feel? Add to that the dizzying number of events, saturation coverage and the sheer number of reporters in Vancouver competing for angles. It's almost inevitable that many come off as armchair Chicken Littles."
Den Tandt is being generous in his assessment. He said this means those reporters were "poorly prepared to cover an event that inherently holds much more human interest than hard news." Human interest doesn't get any street credit these days. It's all about drawing a line in the sand and portraying non-gold medalists as somewhat failures. While I won't say gold isn't the best, it isn't 'the only.' How many of these reporters would have taken on decades in training to compete for a precious few seconds, or minutes? It's easy to speculate with your feet planted firmly on the ground whilst the Olympic-caliber athlete you rip apart jumps a ramp and flips head over heels on skis. Den Tandt goes on to remind readers,
