IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT THE OLYMPICS
Many of Canada’s greatest athletes have never been successful at the five-ring circus
Erik Guay was a toddler on the bunny hill back in 1983 when Wayne Gretzky called the New Jersey Devils “Mickey Mouse” after his Edmonton Oilers administered a 13-4 beating at the Meadowlands Arena.
Now all grown up, Guay channelled his inner Gretzky earlier this month when he told The Canadian Press the Olympics are “a little bit of a Mickey Mouse show” compared to the world championships in alpine skiing.
His comments came in the aftermath of two world championship medals — including gold in the super-G — in the span of five days. At 35, he is the oldest man or woman to win a world title and he’s the most decorated ski racer in Canadian history.
So it’s really not surprising that Guay bristled at questions about the Olympics in the hours after pulling off arguably the greatest achievement of his career. Imagine, if you will, how Sidney Crosby would respond to queries about the 2018 PyeongChang Games while whirling around the ice with the Stanley Cup over his head. “I had just won two world championship medals, so I was a little bit put off,” Guay said Tuesday from Norway. “I wanted to get away from the Olympics as much as I could and enjoy the moment of having won the world championships.” That being said ... “I don’t think there’s any honour higher than representing your country at the Olympics and probably winning a medal at those Olympics,” Guay said. “For worldwide recognition and national recognition, there’s nothing that tops that.”
Maybe so, but Guay’s original comments raise the question: should we judge our athletes solely on Olympic success? What about the other three years, 11 months and two weeks on the calendar?
The reality is many of Canada’s greatest athletes never won an Olympic medal. Kurt Browning is a four-time world champion in figure skating. His best Olympic showing was fifth. Aerialist Steve Omischl won the Crystal Globe as the World Cup overall champion four times and took home four medals from the world championships. He, too, was shut out at the Olympics.
Guay has come close three times. He lost out on bronze by a mere tenth of a second in the super-G at the 2006 Turin Games. Four years later in Vancouver, he posted a pair of agonizing fifth-place finishes on home snow. That super-G race in Vancouver proved particularly heartbreaking, with the Canadian stopping the clock just 3/100ths of a second back of bronze and 6/100ths away from silver.
“Ever since I started skiing competitively, I’ve had three goals — to win a world championship, a Crystal Globe and an Olympic medal for Canada,” Guay said. “Over the past 17 years and through six knee surgeries, some incredible crashes and rehab stints, I’ve continued to battle each year just for the opportunity to compete against the best in the world.”
In truth, the field is deeper at any given World Cup race than at the Olympics, where dominant alpine countries like Austria, Switzerland and France are limited to four spots each. (Canada has a similar problem in sports like moguls skiing, snowboarding and curling, where competition to make the Olympic team is fierce.)
In alpine skiing, World Cup venues are generally considered more challenging — and more a test of pure skill — than ones at the Olympics, where organizers are limited by geography and preparation time.
“When I look back to Sochi, the top part was really tight, technical and almost like a super-G set for the first 30 seconds,” Guay said of the downhill course at the 2014 Winter Games. “And then it got into this really nice, flowy downhill with good jumps and good terrain. It takes years and years for courses to adapt and change. At Kitzbuhel, they’ve been running it for like 75 years and the course has drastically changed over the years. They continue to modify and continue to work on the contours in the summer to the point where they know exactly how it’s going to run, how high the jumps will be and how to prepare the snow.”
The other thing about the Olympics: the competitors are human. They sometimes catch a cold or the flu. Weather can also be a factor, with slushy conditions — as one example — favouring some athletes over others. Logistics are almost always a nightmare, with buses not showing up, ski lifts breaking down and things generally not going to plan.
On the night Gretzky evoked Mickey Mouse in 1983, the New Jersey Devils took action. They fired coach Billy MacMillan and eventually evolved into a perennial contender.
Some 34 years later, we as sports fans should perhaps take a step back and ponder the meaning behind another Canadian superstar’s comments about the lovable rodent with big ears.
For while Guay would unquestionably cherish an Olympic medal, no athlete’s success — not his, not Kurt Browning’s, not Steve Omischl’s or a host of other world champions — should be defined solely by Olympic performance.
There’s a lot more to sports than the five-ring circus.