ATHLETES MAKE CANADA PROUD AT THE OLYMPICS
Drama and heartbreak of past two days cannot erase their stellar performances
He’s the only Canadian to have climbed Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen, the only person on the planet to have climbed and skied Iraq’s highest peak and, two years ago, he set a new world record for fastest solo row across the Atlantic.
When the Olympic Games are on, though, Laval St. Germain is just another proud Canadian, joining his fellow citizens to root for Team Canada. On Wednesday night, he was one of millions from coast to coast cheering on the women’s hockey team.
“They played such a great game,” he says of the female athletes, who had hoped for their fifth-straight Winter Olympics championship. “I mean, how can you complain when you take it to overtime and then it’s decided by a shootout?”
St. Germain, who knows a little more than the average person about the joys and pain of sport, has plenty of company when it comes to offering words of comfort and support to the players — nine who play on the Calgary Inferno hockey team — in their time of need.
On social media, fellow Olympians Mark McMorris and Scott Moir shouted out their love. “Hold your heads high,” said McMorris, while Calgary’s Kaillie Humphries, who won a bronze medal in women’s bobsled, called them “an inspiration to the world.”
At the Piitoayis Family School in Calgary’s Inglewood neighbourhood, vice-principal Iikiinatookaa Yellow Horn texted player Brigette Lacquette, who mentors the school’s kids through the Classroom Champions program.
“Indigenous people need strong role models and Brigette is that,” says Yellow Horn, whose message to the first-time Olympian was how proud they were of her and that she has many more Olympic Games ahead of her.
It was an embrace they were sorely in need of, after the loss and the drubbing by such observers as Washington Post columnist Matt Bonesteel, who wrote, “Eat it, Canada.”
Then there was the heated debate on social media, after Team Canada player Jocelyne Larocque removed her silver medal right after receiving it. Many called it unsportsmanlike, while others defended it as an emotional reaction. Time Magazine’s headline read: “Olympic Hockey Medallist Immediately Yanks Off Her Silver Because Only Gold is Acceptable.”
For some, it was another lump of coal in a week where coal has been in plentiful supply for the Canadian athletes, with the women’s curling team taken out of medal contention for the first time and the men’s rink’s hopes for gold dashed by their American rivals, which prompted one Canadian sports columnist to declare Feb. 21, 2018, “Canada’s worst Olympic day ever.”
Still, the drama of the past couple of days doesn’t erase the 26 medals (equalling the record haul in Vancouver, as of 10 p.m. Thursday) picked up by Team Canada, as competition heads into its final weekend.
Fans such as St. Germain say that it also doesn’t cancel out the fact that the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, as well as the performance of Canada’s athletes, has been a success.
“We invest a lot in our winter athletes, so we expect a lot,” says St. Germain. “I’d be more concerned if we weren’t bitching about losing a few events.”
When it comes to the great stories already told in these Winter Olympics — the Moir/Virtue legacy, Mark McMorris’ victorious return after a near-fatal accident and Cassie Sharpe’s half-pipe gold — Tyler Seitz says this will be an Olympics to treasure.
“I think it will be the best one Canada’s ever had,” says Seitz, whose job as senior manager of ice and building operations at WinSport puts him in daily contact with many of the Olympians during training. “The mood in our building has been incredibly upbeat.”
Then there is the hope of Canadian fans for what’s still to come. Seitz, a former luger who competed at Nagano in 1998 and Salt Lake City in 2002, says he’s excited about the upcoming fourman bobsled competition.
St. Germain can’t wait for the event that, for many Canadians, is the pinnacle of the Olympic Winter Games: the men’s hockey championship game.
“Sports brings out the best in us,” says St. Germain. “It allows us to display our national pride at the perfect level.”