It is that time game, the 29th Olympiad has fallen upon us and is coming at as live (or sort of live) from the world's next most powerful nation of China. For those of you who don't think that they are going to overtake the states as the world leader, kindly take your head out of the sand and take a look at their sheer population size of 1.3 BILLION people, that is almost 4 times as big as the states. On that fact alone you can hold them down anymore and they are coming and coming fast. But I digress as that has nothing to do with the post I am writing.
This post is about Canada and our showing at the Olympics and just our attitude in general. I am about ready to puke if I hear one more time the following sentence "We are so proud of ourselves for the way that we competed, we can officially call our selves Olympians" This is the do gooder attitude that is getting us NO WHERE!!! since when has it been the goal to go to the Olympics and simply compete. Now I am not a world class athlete, but I have played in sports and would consider my self an athlete of some sorts, with that said, if I was training to go to the Olympics, I would want my country to give me what I needed to compete for gold, not simply compete.
I am not blaming the athletes as they do the best with the training that they have been afforded, I am putting the blame right on the shoulders of us, the people of Canada. We need to start kickin ass and taking names when it comes to things like this. If you take a look at the Chinese, once they found out they were awarded the games, they made it their mission, notice how it was not a goal, THEIR MISSION to finish first overall when it comes to medals and especially gold medals, now they might not beat the states, but they sure as shit are giving it a helluva run. This is something that the rest of the athletic world should be taking note of. If you are going to compete in something, go to win it all!! We as Canadians don't have that killer instinct and consider it simply an honor to have shown up.
I am not saying that every athlete that goes to the games needs to come home with a medal, but aren't you all just as sick of coming in 22th 28th 24th 48th or higher and not having a single medal yet?? I know that we are not going to be able to compete with the likes of china or the states, but no medals... this is becoming a joke that the Canadian government needs to open their eyes to and start providing proper funding. We have world class athletes that could be coming home with medals, yet we aren't providing them with the needs to get to the next level of competition.
With all this said, I realize that we are more of a winter Olympics nation and we have started the "own the podium" campaign for Vancouver 2010, but why cant we have success in both summer and winter, last time i looked we do have summer and all that jazz in this country (yes i know that some might debate this). We are a powerful enough nation that we should be able to have better results than we are getting.
To finish, the attitude of we came, competed, did the best we could and can be proud to be Olympians... that is the athletes way of politely asking/telling the country that they need more funding if we are to get better result. I am curious and almost anxious to see how our little "Own the Podium" will turn out. If we take it as serious as the Chinese did, then we will be one damn proud nation, but we continue the way we have, we aint gonna own squat.
These are my thoughts and in no way reflect the thoughts of facts from or about anyone else but you may find this interesting "Get serious Canada"
CIAO!!
