Canada changing for the better

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/02/2018 (2784 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

GANGNEUNG, South Korea — We were accused of bad sportsmanship for yelling at a Russian coach in a cafeteria before the 2018 Winter Olympics even began.

We were accused of bad sportsmanship for booting an opponent’s curling rock off the ice.

We were accused of bad sportsmanship for treating a silver medal like it was radioactive.

We stole a car and drove impaired during a drunken late night escapade that would have made Ryan Lochte blush.

We issued public apologies three times.

We sucked at team curling.

We lost the only women’s hockey game that matters.

We had to settle for bronze in men’s hockey.

The only speedskating medals we won were thanks to a guy who was Dutch four years ago.

Oh, and it was the most successful Olympic Games in Canadian history.

You’ve changed, Canada. And all for the better.

A nation whose depth at the Winter Olympics used to be a mile wide and an inch deep has officially morphed into an international sports powerhouse that is both confident in who we are and capable of taking on all comers in whatever discipline you’d care to challenge us.

No medals in team curling? No biggie — we’ll win seven in freestyle skiing.

No golds in hockey? So what — we’ll take down two in figure skating.

Wondering what happened to our once vaunted speedskating team? It’s moved to short-track, where we took five medals.

Don’t like the way we play the game or carry ourselves anymore? We’ll apologize — we’re Canadians after all — but truth be told we don’t really care much anymore what you or anyone else thinks of us.

Whoa, Canada? Deal with it, we’re busy winning medals.

Let history record Canada finished the 2018 Winter Olympics with a national record 29 medals — 11 gold, 8 silver and 10 bronze — breaking the record of 26 set in Vancouver in 2010.

Our men won 12 medals, our women won 12 medals and the remaining five came in mixed events. Freestyle skiing accounted for seven medals, short track for five, figure skating and snowboarding four apiece and a smattering of two medals or less came in everything else.

Canada finished third in the overall medal standings behind Germany, who finished second with 31 medals but had the most gold medals at 14, and Norway, who won the overall medals title at 38.

Manitobans more than pulled their weight in the effort. Of the seven Manitobans who competed here for Canada, six returned home with medals — Kaitlyn Lawes, gold, mixed doubles curling; Bailey Bram, Jocelyne Larocque, Brigette Lacquette, silver, women’s hockey; and Chay Genoway and Quinton Howden, bronze, men’s hockey.

You can also add to that tally the medals won by Manitoba-born athletes who moved away at young ages: Eric Radford, gold and bronze, figure skating; John Morris, gold, mixed doubles curling.

And finally, there was the stunning silver medal former Winnipegger Brooks Macek won Sunday as a winger for the upstart German men’s hockey team, who authored a Miracle on Ice of their own by getting to the gold medal final before losing 4-3 in overtime to the Olympic Athletes from Russia: a team that, by the way, included former Manitoba Moose Sergei Shirokov and former Thrashers/Jets prospect Ivan Telegin on the roster.

Nine of the 12 athletes with Manitoba connections in some form came home with 10 medals at these Pyeongchang Games — a huge success for a province our size.

There will, of course, be some concerns over Canadian hockey’s failure to produce a gold medal for the first time in 20 years and the shocking — and unprecedented — shutout in team curling.

But what would have spawned royal commissions not so long ago is mostly greeted with a shrug nowadays, no matter what the New York Times says.

The Times ran an exceptionally stupid story late last week in which reporter Scott Cacciola wrote Canadians are in full blown panic over our failure to medal at team curling:

“In the Canadian news media, there have already been demands for summits and special committees. A national crisis is at hand…”

Blah, blah, blah — it went on like that, like we’re all a bunch of rubes who are living or dying with what Kevin Koe and Rachel Homan did, and mostly didn’t do, at the curling venue.

That’s so 20 years ago.

I covered the Canadian Curling Trials in Ottawa in December at which both Homan and Koe won the right to represent Canada at these Olympics. They were both the best teams that week.

But even if we were a country that hand-picked our curling teams, like the British do, I’d argue you probably still would’ve picked Koe and Homan to represent us here, given their results over the last quadrennial.

What happened here wasn’t some systemic problem with Canadian curling. I don’t even really buy that it was further evidence of how the rest of the world is catching up with us in curling. I think it was just two very good Canadian teams who had bad weeks at the worst possible time.

Stuff happens. For the first time ever, it happened to us at curling. Nobody who doesn’t work for the New York Times is panicking.

Funny, isn’t it, how the rest of the world wants to dwell on our losses while we as Canadians have already moved on to savour our record success.

Woe Canada? Please.

For two weeks here on the other side of the world, Canadian athletes put on a record-setting medal performance. The fact we did it without a single medal in curling makes that even more impressive, not less so.

The world got used to ignoring Canada. But they’re noticing us now and they’re not sure what to make of these new Canadians, brimming with confidence and maybe even a little brash.

We’ll never stop apologizing in Canada, of course. But maybe years from now, when we look back at these Games, we might remember them as the moment we stopped apologizing for Canada.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @PaulWiecek