BUYING THE PODIUM.

I’m an economist so my forecasts are inherently untrustworthy. Still, I’m willing to bet that over the next 17 days Canada’s Olympic coverage follows the same pattern it has since the television age began.

In the lead-up to the opening ceremonies serious journalists give us pieces on what’s wrong with the Games in general and the upcoming Games in particular, as well as what the Olympics’ place and role in contemporary society are and so on.

In some cases — Rio and Montreal, for example — there’s concern about whether facilities will be ready: my hometown still holds the record for least-completed Olympic stadium, which still doesn’t work the way it was supposed to. In Vancouver in 2010 the exposés were of homelessness and addiction in the Downtown Eastside.

Tokyo offers no such drear so instead the focus has been on COVID and the locals’ lack of enthusiasm for foreign visitors — which may well be increased by the fact that Japanese anti-olympic protesters seem greatly outnumbered by the foreign visitors covering them.

This week CBC’S Adrienne Arsenault did her dutiful best to stoke controversy by asking Dick Pound — an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member since, it seems, the days of Pierre de Coubertin himself — about how unfair it would be if IOC officials and other sports and corporate grand poobahs got to attend events while ordinary Japanese — who we had just been told don’t actually want the Olympics to go ahead — must watch on TV, possibly with piped-in crowd noise. Not surprisingly, the ever-unflappable Pound didn’t flap, though I did think that above his mask, his eyes twinkled in derision at the state broadcaster’s attempt to stoke class envy in this way.

Then, stage two: once the Games start, organizational problems usually melt away in the flood of enthusiasm and high spirits and we all get caught up in the sports and, as legendary ABC producer Roone Arledge called it, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

With virtually no spectators allowed — or should that be with spectators only allowed virtually? — most people will be watching in high-definition, living-colour, big-screen close-up, where the beauty, grace and intensity of higher, faster, stronger are invariably mesmerizing. And, quite apart from the enchantment of the human performances, there will be the national scorecards to keep track of and our Canadian teams and entrants to root for. So we’ll get drawn into the nationalism of it all.

Which is where the third dependable part of the coverage comes in. Around Day 10, whether Canada is doing well or not, there will begin to be on-air discussion about the inadequacy of Canadian funding for its Olympic effort, including interviews with athletes about how their competitors in other countries have many more resources and much better support.

As I say, this theme emerges regardless of how Canada is doing. If we’re near the top of the medal standings, the ask is that we build on the success of our various “Own the Podium” programs. If what we’ve spent so far has had such a great payoff, the argument goes, imagine what even more money will do — which of course is a complete non sequitur. As any good investment adviser will tell you (I hope will tell you!), the fact that an investment paid off over a given period doesn’t mean even more money spent on the same kind of investment must pay off again over the next period.

But if Canada isn’t doing as well in the medal count as had been expected, then the pitch is how we have to pour even more money into our various sports bodies so as to overcome the national shame of being out-medalled at the Olympics by, I don’t know, Poland or Norway or (a common comparator country) Australia.

No doubt there’s something lacking in my psychological makeup — maybe it’s the economist thing — but I seldom actually feel this sense of shame that our athletes may not be doing as well on average as the athletes of other countries that pay their stars more or provide them with better facilities or coaching or other forms of support. If we did put more money into our programs and paid our athletes more, no doubt we would win more medals and, for two weeks every two years (counting winter and summer games), feel better about ourselves.

But it would be better still, wouldn’t it, to encourage Canadians to take pride in their own accomplishments, not the accomplishments of others, even if made possible by the tax dollars of all of us? If the contest devolves to seeing which country can win the most medals or medals per capita by putting the most resources into its elite sports programs, the whole thing becomes a little pointless, doesn’t it? It becomes more of an experiment in human physiology — if a subject does activity X full-time for 15 years, how good can that subject become at it? — than anything to do with an event that still goes by the name “Games.”

If we do give in to measuring countries and systems this way, then the East Germans have won.

I SELDOM ACTUALLY FEEL THIS SENSE OF SHAME THAT OUR ATHLETES MAY NOT BE DOING AS WELL ON AVERAGE.