A Canadian’s objective view of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games!

Author: Scott Taylor

March 1, 2010

Scott Taylor's E-Take is sponsored by Biotech Laser, who utilize a low intensity laser that stimulates the natural healing of tissue.

Let’s hope that between now and 2014, the Canadian government and the Canadian TV rightsholder for Sochi just shuts the hell up.

I do NOT hate to say I told you so, so I’ll say I told you so.

Last week, Canada was having a great Olympics (see here), and as we expected, it just got better.  But everything would have been fine right from the Opening Ceremony if the pre-Olympic bullshit hadn’t been so shrill and overwhelming.

Canada had a tremendous 21st Olympic Winter Games: 14 golds, seven silvers and five bronze medals.  A record 26 medals in total.  Third overall.  Not only the lead in gold medals, but an Olympic record, 14 gold medals.  Both Canadian hockey teams won gold medals.  It doesn’t get any better than that.

OK, except for maybe that hockey game yesterday.  Spectacular, just magnificent.  And when Sidney Crosby ripped home the winning goal in overtime, well, what can you say?  Gold medal.  OT.  3-2.  A magnificent end to a pretty interesting 17-day TV show.

But that dreadful I-Believe-Own-the-Podium pre-Olympic advertising campaign, the campaign that compelled Canadian athletes to apologize to the nation if they didn’t win a medal, was such an annoying crock.  CTV, TSN and the Canadian government should be ashamed of themselves.

How about this suggestion for 2012 (on CTV) in London and 2014 (likely on CBC) in Sochi?  Just shut up.  Run the Own the Podium program, spend big money, build champion Canadian athletes and then don’t say a single freakin’ word about it.  For the next two Olympiads, just shut up and play.

Oh, to dream.

* * *

I'm too old for the Olympics.  Being there, that is.  Being at the Olympics is for young people who enjoy long, late boozy parties and plenty of buses.

It's also for people who don't roll their eyes every time an IOC member opens his mouth.  I mean come on.  Those aristocratic European hypocrites who had a cow when the Canadian women's hockey team partied after winning a gold medal, should be escorted by security to the airport and told to leave the country immediately.  Those women might have participated in the last women's Olympic hockey game (probably not, but it's certainly possible) and they decided that it was an important enough victory to celebrate.  Good for them.

"Oh, but there might have been an underaged girl there."  Yeah. And so what?  Marie-Philip Poulin is 18.  In Manitoba she's not underage.  Marie-Philip, you're personally invited to Manitoba Homecoming 2010.  My goodness, just go to any university on any given weekend in Canada or the United States and just watch all the underage girls getting plastered.  My gawd, grow up people.  The folks who didn't like Team Canada's celebration were the folks who were NOT invited to the party.

* * *

A colleague asked me the other day, “Did you enjoy the Olympics?”  Tougher question than you might think.  I loved the hockey.  I enjoyed some of the sports with the mute button on.  Others?  If the Olympic gold medal was on the line in a judged sport (figure skating, aerials, moguls, short-track — which shouldn't be a judged sport but from what we saw in Vancouver, it is — etc.) and they decided to hold it in my backyard, I wouldn't open the drapes to watch it.  Judging at every possible level of sport is so frustratingly phoney, it's just impossible to watch without laughing out loud.

I’m glad I’m not a British Columbian.  The Olympics will end up about $1 billion in the glue (would have $423 million more without the “emergency” help of the IOC) and one wonders if $1 billion is a good prioce for a skeleton, luge and bobsleigh centre and a speedskating oval.

Other than that, I did enjoy the Games.  Especially ski cross, snowboard cross and long-track speedskating.  I also enjoyed all of them even more with no sound on the TV.

Perhaps, if CTV and TSN had just one announcer per sport — one of the professional play-by-play guys like Rod Black or Rod Smith (especially Rod Smith) — the Games-with-audio would have been quite enjoyable.  But when Catriona LeMay Doan or one of the other fawning, bullshit artists opened their mouths, I wanted to gag.  Thank the lord for the mute button.

As my pal Mike Richards said on the Fan 960 in Calgary last week, "Here was a typical comment by one of the CTV analysts: 'Yes, Rod, what a wonderful athlete who has worked so hard all her life for this special moment because you know Rod, winning is better than losing.  That's right Rod, winning is good.  Losing isn't good.  We like winning, Rod.  All Canadians like winning.  She likes winning.  She has so much heart because she knows she likes to win... more than losing.'"

Click.
* * *

To be fair, I really enjoyed the coverage of Sunday’s gold medal hockey game: On NBC.  Concise, accurate play-by-play by Mike Emrick.  Sharp, insightful, objective, colour commentary and analysis by Eddie Olczyk (until the post-game).  Great pictures, significantly fewer commercials and no Pierre McGuire.

NBC covered the game as if it was an NHL game, which essentially it was.  CTV covered it as if it was the end of the world.  I love hockey.  I don’t need to be told how important this game was. 

Not surprisingly, as it was throughout the Olympics for NBC, there were more facts, more honesty, an equal level of excitement and less B.S.  Funny how American Olympic broadcasting has grown to become more “Canadian” (more CBC-like?) while CTV’s coverage of the Games was full of that jingoistic drivel that we always used to hate about the American telecasts.

Yep, I’m too old for the Olympics.  I’ve been around too long and I’m aware they’re going to do all this again in Sochi in 2014.  It’s not cynicism.  It’s just that my bullshit-meter was working overtime the past two weeks and by Sunday, it was tired.

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