Canada no longer just a Winter Olympics country
Our medal haul was impressive, but Games show America’s dominance
We love to make declarations on national character. Our generalizations are neat, sharp, confident and enduring — even when they are silly, soiled, clichéd and wrong.
We know, with certainty, that the Americans are arrogant, the Canadians modest, the Japanese polite, the Germans efficient, the Irish garrulous, the English stuffy, the Scots cheap, the Italians charming. We could go on. We do, often with a sense of superiority.
Every two years, the Olympic Games provide a delicious opportunity to make a metaphorical meal of the stereotypes of the 200 or so countries that compete. It’s a celebration of the national character of peoples everywhere, and it’s too good to resist.
It begins with the uniforms that the athletes wear at the opening ceremonies. Some are always smart, as the Japanese and the Italian were this year. Some are garish, as the Croatians were (their red-checked motif seemed cut from motor-racing flags.)
Some are practical, like the South Koreans (whose clothing was treated to counter the Zika virus). Some are odd, like the Australians, who looked like they were stepping off Daddy’s yacht.
Some are ridiculed. The uniforms worn by the American athletes were designed by Ralph Lauren but they were either too preppy, too patriotic or too much like the Russians. That comparison was not a compliment.
When you are the front-runner, as the Americans are, you invite criticism. It comes with success. It doesn’t help to have clowns like Ryan Lochte, whose mischief outside the pool means that he won’t be promoting bathing suits for Speedo anymore.
But the American story isn’t Lochte or the seriously strange Michael Phelps. It is, as much, the expressions of generosity and collegiality that are also thoroughly American. We see those in Aly Raisman, the gymnast who graciously held Simone Biles’s hand in tribute as they walked to the podium, although Raisman won silver while her spectacular teammate won gold. Or Abbey D’Agostino, who helped Australian Nikki Hamblin finish the marathon after both had fallen, as Hamblin helped her.
Most of all, it is the sheer supremacy of the United States. In the Olympics the Americans put on a breathtaking display in virtually every sport.
They won 121 medals. China, with four times the population and a huge commitment to competitive international sports, won 70 medals. Great Britain won 67, Russia 56.
It’s fashionable today to talk about America’s decline; Donald Trump has fashioned his campaign around “Make America Great Again.” But as Joe Biden reminds us, it’s always dangerous to bet against the United States. Its politics may be unsightly and its conversation may seethe with racial tension, but the country remains the richest, strongest power on Earth, dominating science, technology, culture and medicine, projecting unmatched military, economic and diplomatic power everywhere.
The Olympic Games are another expression of the country’s towering stature. Make America Great? On the world’s playing fields — and so many other fields of endeavour — it remains supreme.
If America is great, Canada is good. We had a spectacular Olympics. After years of mediocrity — embarrassingly as host in Montreal in 1976 and Calgary in 1988 — we’ve made the Olympics an emblem of identity. More remarkably, we are largely a winter sports power, and we could easily say that we cannot excel at both.
But we are now competitive in winter and summer. “Going for the bronze” is no longer a Canadian boast, accepted by Canadians with a sigh, a shrug and a standing ovation for effort. Now we go for gold — and we get it.
It is un-Canadian to suggest our athletes are more self-effacing than others, but didn’t Penny Oleksiak look so Canadian when she mouthed parts of O Canada from the podium, receiving her gold medal? She was either uncomfortable or didn’t know the words.
A young, self-assured woman from suburban Toronto, successful in the world, superbly modest, shyly patriotic but loath to belt out the national anthem?
This is Canada, 2016.