Editor:
Re: Raeside cartoon, Aug. 17
Having tied Uganda, Uzbekistan and Grenada in gold medal count in London
in 2012, the words and sentiments of Canada's erstwhile sports minister on the
occasion of the Olympic Summer Games in Athens in 2004 seem uncomfortably
contemporary.
Turning the "Pursuit of Excellence" into a "Quest for Adequacy," the then federal
sports minister Stephen Owen, at the opening of the Olympic Summer Games in
2004, opined: "I think we've got to be really careful about a fixation on medal
numbers" and sagely adding, so that there could be no misunderstanding: "We're
all interested in it, but it's not really indicative of sport health in our country."
In this country of ours where the sheer competitive spirit of winning is often frowned upon as somehow "un-democratic" and "un-Canadian and "too American," Owen's sentiments conveniently lowered the bar for all of us, making a virtue out of losing by nobly reaffirming that: "It's not whether we win or lose, it's how we play the game."
After all, at the close of the 2004 Athens Summer Games, Owen expressed the
quintessentially Canadian spirit by gushing that "...when you look at the list across
all the sports - a fourth here, and a ninth there and a seventh here and a tenth there
and a sixth here, those are world-champion results."
Lack of funding may indeed have contributed to the poor showing of Canada's
athletes at the Calgary Winter Olympics in 1988 and the 2004 Summer Olympic
Games in Athens, but the remarkable performance of our athletes during the Turin
Winter Games, together with a determination for us to excel and strive to "Own the
Podium" in the Vancouver Winter Games in 2010, was a hopeful sign that Canadians may no longer be satisfied with merely going for the "bronze."
Sadly, in London in 2012, it was not to be.
E.W. Bopp
