BEST WINTER GAMES. EVER
Medal count allows us to look down on our neighbours.
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— There was a morning-after to Thursday Bloody Thursday.
A Friday and a Saturday and a closing ceremonies Sunday, if the world unfolds as it should.
Rise and shine Canada: You’ve had a better Olympic Games than the U-S-of-A.
Which hasn’t happened since Nagano in 1998.
Listen, I don’t want to kick America when it’s down. They’re doing a fine job kicking themselves — at least that part of the population with two brain cells to rub together — ever since that whole presidential election thing.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his family may have made fools of themselves in India this past week, going all Bollywood fashionisti with the saris and the sherwanis. (In Trudeau-World, shouldn’t that be considered cultural appropriation?) But at least no ex-Playboy Playmate (I) or porn actress (II) has made claims of an extramarital leg-over with selfie T-Boy while Sophie was at home nursing the Trudeau spawn. Like you-know-who. Nor has any dossier surfaced alleging golden showers whilst trysting with prostitutes in Moscow.
No, I wouldn’t trade Trudeau for Trump for all the fracking profits in the world. Or all the treasure in the NRA war chest.
More to the point, I wouldn’t swap a single Canadian Olympian for a single American Olympian, even the U.S. women who kicked Canada’s butt in the gold-medal hockey game — they really did deserve to win and would doubtless have done so even without the stupid shootout deciding it — and the U.S. curlers who laid a lickin’ on the Canadian men, outhosing the hosers in a sport which, while we may not have invented it, we’ve certainly appropriated. (There’s that word again.)
I liked curling a lot better, in my short (ruinous) stint as the Star’s curling writer, when you could smoke and drink beer on the ice.
America has never actually been the colossus of the Winter Games. That distinction belongs to Norway, probably always will, and couldn’t happen to a nicer country. I’ve always said they should have left the cold Games in prettyas-a-picture Lillehammer permanently. Last Winter Olympics I can recall which actually had snow all over, rather than just up in the mountainous heights, what we now designate as “clusters.” Well, a cluster-yuck I’d call it, these duelling biospheres of competition, segregating skiers from skaters and sliders from pucksters.
But I digress, which is what NBC has been doing over the past fortnight, every time another ballyhooed American comes a cropper.
While Canada is enjoying its most successful Winter Olympics ever, third on the medal tote-board behind Norway and Germany — 10 gold, 8 silver, 9 bronze — at 27 as of Friday night here, surpassing Vancouver 2010, the U.S. was on pace for its worst performance since 1998, with 8 gold, 7 silver and 6 bronze.
You’re Number 4! You’re Number 4!
There was a good likelihood our neighbours to the south would collect a fistful of hardware on Saturday, with alpine skiing events, the gold-medal curling match versus Sweden and a full menu of slalom and big air snowboarding. But Canada is no big air slouch and the Yanks won’t catch up. Although we’ve apparently forgotten how to play hockey, dusted 4-3 by the Germans on Friday night. Teutons? Eishockey? Yeah, no NHLers — Gary Bettman, you’re a dink — but surely our bush-leaguers should be better than their bush-leaguers.
If the sun is setting on the American Empire, the evidence can be ascertained here, at the XXIII Winter Olympics.
One can go from venue to venue scarcely hearing a refrain of USA! USA! USA! And a fine thing too because the world is a better place without that in-your-ear mantra.
Oh the hand-wringing, south of the 49th Parallel, though I doubt they’ll be launching a congressional investigation. Too many of those already, with more serious subjects under investigation. Quite a few commentators and pundits have taken a run at it, though, suggesting two fundamental reasons behind the lacklustre showing: Underperforming superstars and a slew of pencilled-in medallists who’ve finished just off the podium, in the dreaded No. 4 spot.
Teenage figure skating sensation Nathan Chen was a bust, his six quads in the free program notwithstanding. Lights-out with nothing to lose doesn’t become anybody; just means you turtled when the pressure was on. There was a nice bronze by the sh-boom Shibutani Siblings in ice dance but, in Friday’s ladies final, worst historical outcome ever: ninth, 10th, 11th. A bronze in the team event last week, to Canada’s gold, but we won’t even pretend that this Jerry-rigged-comelately is a real discipline.
Mikaela Shiffrin was supposed to be the star of these Games, had planned to compete — and medal — in five disciplines of alpine skiing. But after blazing to a golden start, winning giant slalom, the notyet-23-year-old didn’t make the podium at all in slalom, considered her best event, dropped out of the super G and downhill, and copped silver in the alpine combined. A glittery accomplishment, gold and silver, but the Americans, they want medals galore, Godzillian athletes à la Michael Phelps. So somehow Shiffrin gets knocked down to a quasi-flop, just like Lindsey Vonn with her single bronze.
Maybe they just don’t appreciate what they’ve got. Shaun White made history, capturing his third Winter Olympics gold in halfpipe, but was practically run out of the country with media regurgitating a two-year-old sexual impropriety allegation which was settled out of court in 2017. Amidst the #MeToo phenomenon, his heroics on a snowboard are tarnished. So, a gold for the medal tally but the cheering was muted.
Zero medals in speedskating, where once they were giants. Zilch in bobsled, though that could change on Sunday. Ousted by the Czech Republic in a men’s hockey quarter-final.
Honestly, I have no axe to grind with the U.S. I love America, even in its darkest moments. I’ve never suffered from an inferiority complex about our neighbours but likewise reject the superiority complex that Canadians often evince, as if we’re somehow morally mightier.
What I don’t like is a mewling, diminished U.S., which isn’t good for the planet and doesn’t much glorify the Olympics either.
Actually, I take back what I said earlier, about having no envious interest in American athletes.
Give us the divine Adam Rippon. We’ll give you, uh, Don Cherry.