Canadian competitors, fans find touches of hoserism in London at athletes’ village, pub

The London Olympics may be a foreign environment for Canadian athletes and fans, but there are still some touches of home in evidence. For fans, there's the famed Maple Leaf pub, a slice of Canadiana complete with Sleeman (on draught), Moosehead (in bottles) and poutine. For the athletes, their portion of the Olympic village has already been decked out with everything from the giant red plastic moose last seen in Whistler in the Winter Olympics to barbecues and ball hockey nets (which you can see in the above photo, tweeted by Canadian gymnast Dominique Pegg). This isn't the home turf of the 2010 Games, but touches like this could help make London a better experience for both fans and athletes.

On the fan side, the Maple Leaf has long been a gathering point for Canadians abroad in London. During hockey season, they'll replay taped NHL broadcasts at respectable hours, and they go to great lengths to import Canadian beers. Decorations of moose, beavers and hockey jerseys make overseas visitors feel right at home, and the staff is largely comprised of hosers on vacation. Really, it's tough to top the polite, understated and yet awesome description of the establishment from 21-year-old bartender Brianna Middleton MacPherson, an Edmonton native: "It's just a place where Canadians hang out, really." For the red-and-white clad fans in town to cheer on their country's athletes in the Olympics, what could be more perfect?

It's the efforts in the athletes' village that may be more relevant to Canada's on-field performance, though, and the man to credit there is Canadian chef de mission Mark Tewksbury, himself a famed swimmer who picked up a silver as part of the relay team in the 1988 Seoul Olympics and added a gold and a bronze four years later in Barcelona. Tewksbury clearly knows a thing or two about what elite Olympic athletes need to succeed, and he's put in place plenty of touches of home, from athletes' favourite cereals to bikes to ball hockey nets so they can burn off some steam. Tewksbury told Postmedia's Dave Stubbs that the goal is to ensure the Canadian athletes are comfortable, allowing them to put forth their best performances in their events:

While touches of home may not seem all that relevant to high-performance athletics, there's a case to be made that they're valuable. For one thing, the differences between the best athletes at this level in any sport tend to be minute, so a comfortable environment providing the rest, recreation and nutrition competitors need could make a difference. For another, elite Olympic athletes tend to be creatures of extreme routines, which are typically developed at the start of each Olympic cycle and only slightly tweaked in the four years leading up to a Games; making it as easy as possible to maintain those routines is vital. It's even possible that the camaraderie developed between athletes in the village may play a role, as many of Canada's past gold-medal winners have spoken about how other Canadian athletes inspired them. None of those aspects may seem like a critical element in Olympic competition, but sometimes it's the little things that count, and the touches of hoserism in London may yet wind up making a difference.