AMBITIOUS TARGET
‘We may not win the medal count this time ... but one day we will’
Four years later, the men and women leading Canada’s mission at the Winter Olympics find themselves still having to explain that it’s all right to reach for the stars.
And it’s not that the people asking the questions Thursday at the Canadian Olympic team’s opening news conference of the Sochi Games were simple-minded — it’s just that, for those who may not have been quite paying attention to the personality shift that took place before and after Vancouver in 2010, the idea that Canadians could retain this much belief in themselves halfway around the world was strange new territory.
But, as far as the team is concerned, that bridge was crossed long ago.
“We will not stand in front of our athletes and say, ‘We’re striving to be pretty good’ or, ‘We’re striving to be right in there.’ We expect to be great,” said chef de mission Steve Podborski.
“We may not win the medal count this time, we may not win it next time, but one day we will. Because we are striving to be No. 1 in the world.”
COC president Marcel Aubut has said it. Own The Podium chief Anne Merklinger has said it. Words like “aggressive” and “audacious” and “swagger” keep popping up.
Podborski, the one-time Crazy Canuck who blazed the trail for a generation of downhill racers, admits that life wasn’t like this in his day as a member of Canada’s world-beating ski team. The country wasn’t. Attitudes weren’t.
There was no grand vision, no national confidence, and definitely no cockiness.
“It was ... not quite frowned upon. But you may remember it was all about participation and being fit, and if you dared to want to be No. 1, it was kind of like going too far. You were an outlier,” Podborski said.
“If I use the example of the Crazy Canucks, we took ourselves and kind of made our own culture. We worked together as a team in a sport that is an individual sport. I mean, when I come down the hill and radio up to Ken (Read) and tell him how to win the race, I’m telling him how to beat me, too. And that is just not done. But we used that as one of our tools to get ahead of the other guys.
“You had to take yourself out of the Canadian context and say, ‘We will do what we want,’ as opposed to being entirely Canadian.
‘We will not stand in front of our athletes and say ‘We’re striving to be pretty good’ or ‘We’re striving to be right in there.’ We expect to be great.’
STEVE PODBORSKI
Canadian Olympic chef de mission
“So when I’m asked if it’s an audacious goal to want to be No. 1, I go ... ‘Who cares? Let’s just aim for it.’”
Vancouver changed everything, from the planning process to the funding to the way it made the country feel about being a winner.
“It transformed us, for sure,” Podborski said. “And now the athletes know that they are expected to do well, and they accept that, and that’s why they’re here and they have risen to the challenge, which was abundantly clear from the results we had (in Vancouver) and the results I think we will have.
“Is it audacious? Yes, but I think Canada is arm-in-arm with us, and we’re not saying anything that would make people say, ‘I don’t get that.’ They get it.”
If there was an overriding theme to the statements Thursday by Aubut and Podborski, by assistant chefs de mission Jean-Luc Brassard and France St. Louis, national curling team coach Elaine Dagg-Jackson and skip Jennifer Jones, it was confidence.
Of course, there hadn’t been a ski run made or a skate blade to hit the ice yet.
And they all know it will be quite different from Vancouver.
“I would say the feeling is that we’ve really improved our ability to be a team — that when we came to Russia, we came here going, ‘Let’s just keep our arms around each other a little bit more,’” Podborski said, “and I have to say, so far it’s been fantastic. I really feel a great spirit, more even than we had in Vancouver.”
Unlike the negative reviews of Sochi’s state preparedness coming from other visitors, the reaction of the Canadians to their accommodations in the Coastal Cluster, where the five major rinks — two for hockey, one each for curling, figure skating and speedskating — are arrayed in a dazzling ring, within walking distance of the athletes’ village, was a unanimous rave.
“There’s always little things going on, even going back to Vancouver there were buses breaking down and things going sideways, but ... it’s just been way better than we expected,” Podborski said. Are we waiting for the other (shoe) to drop? It may not.”