After four years of waiting, the big moment is almost here. The eyes of the world will be focused on Rio next week, as the planet’s greatest athletes gather and the ceremonial torch is lit for the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Do the Games actually start next week? I’m not actually sure. Look, you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t sound as excited as I should be. Please understand that I have a pre-existing condition: I’m Canadian. And to be clear, we like the Summer Olympics just fine. We watch them. We’ve even been known to win a gold medal or two. But they’re not really our thing, you know? At least not in quite the same way that they seem to be for a lot of you.
So I thought I’d take a shot at explaining why that is. Here are eight key reasons why any Canadians you know probably aren’t quite as hyped for the Summer Games as you might expect.
1) It’s not the Winter Olympics
Let’s get the most obvious one out of the way first, if only because it’s not as big a factor as you might think. Yes, Canada tends to get far more into the Winter Olympics. That makes sense; we’re a country of snow and ice, so we do better in events that take place in the environment we’re used to. We dominate hockey, we’re pretty good at speedskating, and we’ve had our moments in figure skating and skiing. None of those events, you may have noticed, work all that well in August.
But winter sports aren’t all we can do. Despite what your stereotypes may have taught you, we do have summer here in Canada. It lasts for three weeks, and ends with 30% of the population having been carried off by mosquitos, but it does happen. And over the years, Canadians have had Olympic success at traditional summer sports like track and field, swimming, diving and rowing. We may not be an international powerhouse, but we have our moments.
So no, it’s not just a winter/summer thing. There’s a bit more going on here.
2) We’re just not all that good
Look, let’s call it like it is. People like to watch their country win, and Canada doesn’t win all that much in the Summer Games. When they show you the medal table, you typically have to scroll a few pages to find us. There’s a few reasons for that, including a relatively small population and a culture that would rather spend money on things like healthcare than making sure everyone can jump really high. But the bottom line is that we try hard and have fun, and sometimes that’s about it.
And again, we do win sometimes. And when that happens, it’s a big deal. We break out into a little national party whenever somebody medals, especially if it’s an unexpected upset, which it probably is. But that all adds up to a steady stream of occasional nice moments, not a flood of non-stop glory. And we’re fine with that. It’s just kind of tough to get too worked up over finishing 36th.
3) Even when we are the best, we get screwed in weird ways
One of my earliest childhood memories involved staying up late to watch Shawn O’Sullivan and Willie DeWitt win boxing gold at the 1984 Games. But neither did, because they got screwed by the judges. And that tends to happen kind of a lot, in both the Summer and Winter events. Sometimes it’s on purpose, because shadowy forces conspire against us. Sometimes it’s by accident, because somebody pressed the wrong button. Sometimes we even lose based on rules everyone knows, and sometimes it’s based on ones that nobody has even heard of.
The point is that Canada having success at the Olympics is often viewed as some sort of weird glitch, and the world has a tendency to respond by taking the cartridge out and blowing on it until everything works again. That kind of thing wears on you after a while.
4) You other countries are just padding your stats
As mentioned, Canada is really good at hockey. You know how many hockey events there are? Two – one each for men and women. That’s it. So every time the Winter Olympics rolls around, we lace up our skates, tape up our sticks, cruelly trick the gullible Americans into thinking they actually have a chance, and then win two gold medals. And that seems pretty reasonable.
But not you guys. Oh no. You other countries discover a sport that you’re good at, and then divide that sport up into three dozen subevents. And then you act like all those medals should count.
Every four years, Australia runs around going “Look at us, we won 20 gold medals!” Yeah, but they were all in swimming, and the same three people won every one of them. We’re very happy for you that you racked up those big wins in the 100m, and also the 105m, and the 105m-in-slightly-colder-water. But at some point it starts to feel like overkill.
When there are 40 different events that are all some small variation on rolling up the rim, give Canada a call and we’ll be there. Until then, please stop making up fake sports just to pad your medal counts.
5) Sometimes, our best athletes don’t want to go
The main appeal of the Olympics is supposed to be that it’s a true best-on-best tournament, one in which everyone sends their most elite athletes to battle for global supremacy. And Canada, despite what you may have heard, produces its share of elite athletes. The problem is that sometimes, they don’t end up wanting to go.
It happened again this year in basketball, a sport in which Canada continues to produce some fantastic talent even though the Americans are rude to us. We’ve churned out a two-time NBA MVP and back-to-back first overall draft picks. We’re not the world’s best basketball nation, but we can hang in there. The problem is that our top players often skip the qualifying tournaments, costing us a spot at the Olympics. It happened again this year.
And not only will we not have a basketball team at the Games, but we’ll also be missing some other top talent, like recent Wimbledon finalist Milos Raonic, who announced the he wouldn’t be going to Rio. Even our horses are pulling out. And when we do get our very best to go to the Games, sometimes they win a gold medal and then immediately develop a fake accent and start pretending to be from another country. Yes, we’re looking at you, Lennox.
Anyway, once the Games get started and you find yourself watching a marquee event that doesn’t have any Canadians in it, just assume we’ve got someone sitting at home who’s really good and would have won if they’d been there. Because, uh, we totally do.
6) We already peaked 20 years ago
In 1996, the Summer Olympics were held in the United States. The biggest event of the Games, as always, was the men’s 100m final. Canadian sprinter Donovan Bailey won gold, shattering the world record in the process, at which point the Americans decided that the 100m final wasn’t that important anyway, and that it was actually the 4x100m relay that mattered. Purely coincidentally, that was an event their team had literally never lost except for failed handoffs. So Bailey and his team-mates, one of whom had the words “blast off” shaved into his head, went out and won that race easily, at which point the Americans decided that the 4x100m also didn’t matter, because now it was the 200m that really counted, and Michael Johnson was dominating that. So Bailey challenged Johnson to a special 150m challenge race, then smoked him so badly that Johnson faked an injury halfway through and Bailey called him a chicken and threatened to “kick his ass”, at which point Americans decided that maybe they’d just start really getting into Will Smith movies and Pokemon.
None of this really has anything to do with my point. I just like mentioning it because that whole story makes Americans really mad.
7) It’s just not in our nature
The occasional gentle teasing of our southern neighbors aside, Canadian just aren’t an especially competitive bunch. Sure, every now and then we may climb into a hockey crowd and start beating fans over the head with their own shoes, but for the most part we just don’t get fired up for international competition the way some of you other countries do. We enjoy them, and we want to win, but it’s not life and death, and we just like to see everyone do well.
Think of it this way: a lot of you guys watch the Olympics like it’s a kids’ game down at the local field, and you’re the angry parent who keeps swearing at the ref. Canada is the one who brings orange slices for everyone and just hopes nobody gets hurt.
We’re just more into the whole “global community” vibe. In fact, let’s all take a break from this article for a great big worldwide group hug. Bring it in, everyone. You too, Iceland, don’t be shy. There it is.
Wasn’t that nice? Canada. We’re all about international goodwill. OK, one last point before we wrap up…
8) You other countries are all damned dirty cheaters
Whoops. So much from that goodwill.
But it’s true, and we all know it. And we’re not just talking about the Russians here. The Olympics are a top-to-bottom slime pit of doping, shortcuts and dirty play, and you just have to be able to look the other way to enjoy them. Some countries are better at that than others.
There’s some history here. Back in 1988, Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson faced his American rival Carl Lewis in the 100m final. It was the culmination of a long rivalry, a showdown that had been years in the making. And Johnson absolutely destroyed him, shattering the world record in the process despite pausing at the finish to ask “Hey, has anyone seen Carl, I haven’t seen him since the starting line.”
And then Johnson failed his drug test, and the world was plunged into its first major steroid scandal. And Canada, God bless our adorable little hearts, vowed to right the wrong. We held an extensive government inquiry, one that saw all of our top athletes and coaches forced to testify to the full extent of the scandal. Athletes were suspended, officials were fired, and an entire country was humiliated. But it was the right thing to do. When it comes to fixing a doping problem, Canada set the model for the world to follow.
And then the rest of you all just kind of laughed at us, because you were all cheating too and nobody cared. It turns out that Lewis was failing drug tests all along, but the Americans happily covered them up for him. British star Linford Christie ended up failing tests too later in his career. Just about everyone in that 100m final turned out to be dirty. Johnson still blew away the field – but he had the bad luck to do it while representing the only country that would actually do anything about it.
No, we’re not still bitter about this, why do you ask?
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So there you have it. Canada is a friendly country that long ago recognized our place as a valiant also-ran in the sporting world and happily accepts this role without shame or excuses, especially since the rest of you are dirty cheaters who keep screwing us over in your made-up fake events. Add it all up, and we’ll be watching the Rio Games along with the rest of the world. Just don’t expect us to be cheering too loudly, or getting overly worked up. It’s just not in our nature.
So let’s all go out there, play fair and have some fun, and may the best country win – even if it probably won’t be Canada. We’re fine with that, and we’ll be happy to politely cheer from the sidelines as the rest of you celebrate all those gold medals.
Right up until 2018, when we’ll break these hockey sticks over all your smug heads.
