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| Own the Podium in the Best Place on Earth |
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| 2010 Olympic Shame |
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| Sick of helicopters yet? |
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Own the Podium. The Best Place on Earth.
Am I the only one who finds these slogans offensive and cringes every time I hear them? Who thinks these things up?
Jingoism is rampant at the Olympic Games, so it should come as no surprise that some bureaucrat would decide that Canada would "own the podium" once taxpayers stepped up and doled out big dollars to improve Olympic performance. According to ownthepodium2010.com, the Government of Canada contributes $47 million per year to the program while the Government of British Columbia "has generously contributed $10 million".
There's only one taxpayer, so this year we have handed over $57 million to Roger Jackson and his gang. Generous indeed. It's one thing for fleece us, it's quite another for the recipients of our largesse to make boneheaded and unsportsmanlike decisions along the way. "Own the Podium" apparently means keeping other nations' elite athletes off our soil (or ice or snow), thereby depriving our aspiring Olympians from training with and learning from the best. Nice call. And how's that "ownership" thing working out? At this writing Canada is behind Korea in total medals and have fewer golds than tiny Switzerland...
Then there's The Best Place on Earth. British Columbia is a nice place and it's where I've chosen to live. But best place on earth? How insufferably arrogant. My vision of the best place on earth is a place where there is adequate health care for all, where homeless people don't sleep on the streets, where aboriginal peoples are treated with dignity and respect, where the police are accountable to the citizens they serve, where people aren't allowed to shoot grizzly bears for fun, where fish farms don't foul the oceans and harm wild salmon, where ancient forests aren't levelled to make toilet paper and where it doesn't rain most of the time...
When I saw the sickening video of the fatal crash of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili on Friday, my immediate reaction was, why weren't those vertical support beams covered? By the next morning they had been,and the track speed had been reduced, although the IOC was blaming the young athlete's inexperience for the tragedy.
An editorial in The Globe and Mail (February 14) has called for a coroner's inquest into the matter to address the many disturbing questions that still linger. The Vancouver Sun's Cam Cole, in a marked departure from CanWest's Games cheerleading, listed these on Saturday:
"Why was the luge track with the record vertical drop running 20 km/h faster than it was designed to be? How could there be exposed steel posts a few feet off an outside curve where athletes are travelling 145 km/h? Was the athlete, ranked 44th in the world, expert enough to handle the dangerous course?
And, most disturbingly: might Canada, in its zeal to protect its athletes' home- course advantage, have inadvertently contributed to the likelihood of crashes involving lower-ranked athletes who hadn't had sufficient opportunity t train on such a wild, fast run?"
Disturbing indeed. If Canada's "zeal" to "own the podium" played any role in this athlete's death, that would be downright criminal.
The Globe is right: a coroner's inquest should be called, and held, without delay.
I am. Only 17 days to go.
