It only happens every two years, so losing a little sleep seems like a reasonable sacrifice.
Judging from a poll we ran online last week, I might be in the minority on this one, but I find the Olympic Games are must-see TV, a two-week extravaganza that allows you to rationalize watching sports every night, and sometimes early in the morning, in the name of national pride.
If I’m being honest, I wouldn’t give a second glance to most of the sports contested in the Olympics, but slap a maple leaf on the chest of one of the competitors and my intertest level rises considerably.
I even found myself watching fencing last week, cheering on Eleanor Harvey as she won this country’s first-ever Olympic medal in the sport. I had no clue what was going on, relying solely on the scoreboard and the commentators, but in the end, all that really mattered was that our athlete was competing on the world’s biggest stage.
The fact she won a bronze medal was a bonus.
The patriotism that comes along with the Olympics is to be expected but I find it has a different dynamic than your typical single-sport international tournament because of the sheer scope of the Games where there are hundreds of winners, not just one.
We're never going to be at the top of the medal table when competing against the likes of the United States and China, but there are instances, many of them actually, where we get the better of them and all other nations, big and small. I get much delight out of the fact that we regularly punch above our weight class.
I can’t fully explain why it's somehow important that we're home to the best swimmer or hammer thrower or judoka on the planet, but there’s something about Summer McIntosh and Ethan Katzberg and Christa Deguchi that makes us all proud to be Canadians.
I feel the same about Okotoks’ own Finlay Knox, who didn’t see his medal dreams come true but who made his hometown very proud, nonetheless. I’ve only been here two years and I’ve never met Knox, but I can tell you I was totally invested in his 200m IM semifinal heat, one that had me experience a range of emotions, all in less than two minutes.
When he was sitting second behind French star Leon Marchand through the first two legs, I was nervous, excited by the possibility of what was to come, only to have my heart sink a little bit when the Canadian flag disappeared from the screen following the third leg when he dropped back. It’s difficult to say whether my shouts of encouragement at the computer screen helped him or not, but when Knox surged along the inside lane during the freestyle portion to claim third place and a spot in the final, I felt pure elation.
That guy who just gutted out a race to keep his Olympic dream alive is one of us. OK, so he’s stronger, faster and far more talented, but he’s Canadian, an Okotokian in fact, and he’s giving us ample reason to be proud.
