In the nicest, most polite way of course. I mean, am I not living proof of how sweet and gentle we Canadians are? We don’t gloat when we win Olympic hockey gold. No, not at all. We would never commit such a sin of vanity.
Well, maybe just a little.
(my favourite part of the video is the uncertainty shown by the drunk fellas with the flag when the cop pulls up and rolls down the window – and then, much to their relief and delight, starts his siren in support of the celebrations)
So who else got up at 4 am yesterday to watch the game?
You know what I love about the winter Olympics? I get to cheer for my country A LOT. Canada does winter Olympics so very, very well that I would like to begin a campaign to add a dressage component to the winter games for 2018. Figure skating already managed to milk the Olympic cow this time around with a team event (more medals! more falls! more tickets sold!). I’m sure if we play our cards right we could ride the coattails of that successful addition and get ice dressage accepted for Korea, at least as a test event. Look at all the parallels: music, choreography, technical elements, controversial judging. It’s a perfect fit.
The horses would have to have some kind of special footwear in order to be able to perform on the ice. My stepfather told me about a fifty year old solution to having no snow tires the other day. Apparently you can rub bleach on banana peel tires and they grip like nobody’s business on ice. Now there’s a cheap set of shoes for once. We can get our horses shod with old tires like those flip flops that are all the recycling rage, and then just swipe on some bleach before they step onto the ice. I vote we let costumes rule the day in this event, too. Let’s go all in on this exciting new Olympic event idea.
You starting to see where I’m going with this?
Canada’s Sochi Chef de Mission Steve Podborski (imagine that – a chef de mission who is an actual ATHLETE, an Olympic medalist no less) said this past weekend that the most important change that has resulted in Canada’s arrival at the top of the podium and one of the top three in medals in Russia is a change in ATTITUDE. “I’d say the biggest change is that we belive in sport in Canada now,” he said in a CBC interview. “We believe in being the best and that’s it’s OK to say ‘I want to win’.” Darn tootin’ Steve!
So let’s go Canada! Let’s get ice dressage into the next winter games. I’m sure Own The Podium will throw all kinds of money at it as an off-shoot of figure skating, so we can get at least an arm of dressage on that program again. And let’s start talking about winning. Because that’s what all our top rivals are talking about.
