JulianSimpson Still living. Still making falafal.

Canada’s olympic performance so far has been underwhelming to say the least and embarrassing to say the most. We haven’t won a single medal. Not one. 0 medals. If you subtract 1 from the number of medals that Uzbekistan has won then you will arrive at the number representing our total.

I’m not in Canada at the moment so I can’t guage the general public’s reaction. I’m guessing though that if past years are anything to go by it is a resounding *meh*. I doubt there is any public outcry. I doubt the media is jumping up and down demanding explanations. In fact I’m willing to bet the CBC is celebrating the “olympic spirit” finding little feel-good nuggets of journalism about athletes who’ve overcome some adversity or whatever. Whatever. I’m also willing to bet that they’ve already interviewed about 20 smiling Canadian athletes who are all “just happy to be here.”, “taking it all in.”, “gave it all I had” and any other defeatist mantras I’ve grown so used to hearing.

How is it that Australia. A country with a lower GDP than Canada, fewer people than Canada, and greater barriers to attend international competition than Canada can be near the top of the medal table while we wallow at the bottom, medaless, wondering if we’ll ever be able to reach the dazzling heights of Azerbaijan, Mongolia, Tajikstan and other such nations who are all ahead of us.

The answer is that Australian people care. They’re competitive by nature and they won’t accept a poor showing from their athletes. Their athletes are well funded and I’m sure Australian people don’t worry too much about how that’ll affect other areas of government spending and taxation. I know it’s much more complicated than all that and there are a number of historical, political, geographical, and climatological factors to consider but there’s no escaping the fact that they have a lot of medals and we have a big golden goose egg.

The fact is though, that olympic and amature athletic performance is not just a nice-to-have. It is above all else a source of identity and nation building. Something Canada who’s culture is often fragmented and always overshadowed sorely needs. The benefits of winning medals is a huge intangible. It’s not something that can be tallied up and factored in spreadsheets.

At the moment I imagine most of the country is taking a casual passing interest to the point where they just about tolerate it taking up space in their television guides. I’m willing to bet though, that if we were up near the top of the medal table a lot of people would suddenly stop and take notice. People would talk about it and perhaps for even longer than the next two weeks. Younger generations would be motivated to follow in the footsteps of successful Canadian athletes and suddenly no one would bother to draw a correlation between a struggling health care system and funding for amature athletics.

Togo has a medal now. Well done Togo. You must be proud.