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Great Britain won an Olympic gold, so Canada will probably stop taunting them now
There is the Canadian way and then there's the bitter way.
Suffice to say, few have forgotten how the Guardian newspaper waited until all of Day 2 to proclaim Vancouver 2010 a contender for "worst Games ever." And now the Olympics are in London and some of the logistics have bestowed a new understanding of the word shambolic (thank you, Bruce Arthur). One would think professional writers would high-road it, not stoop to their — ah to hell with it, they started it. You can almost hear a variation on a popular coffee chain's commercial — this is how you troll. Y!'s own Harrison Mooney, being a sporting chap, took the Guardian's offer to rile its readership.
Disparaging the Vancouver Olympics was a savvy approach for the knock-kneed nation going next. What better way to ensure that London won't be viewed as a momentous disappointment than by setting the bar as low as possible? Of course, this strategy works a whole lot better if, after deprecating the previous Games until an afternoon at Crufts feels like a grander occasion, you don't rest on your laurels so completely that you still manage to limbo below the bar.
The London Games is looking ugly, and I mean that literally. It started early, with the unveiling of that painful logo, the colour scheme for which appears inspired by a Nike catalogue. It resembles either Lisa Simpson performing a sex act or a child's illustration of the breakup of Pangaea. Granted, a long look eventually yields an Easter egg — a "2012" hidden amid the horror — but, like an eclipse, it's hard to stare at it long enough to appreciate it. (Has the sun taught you nothing, London? Perhaps if you saw it more often.)
But a logo that's best viewed through a pinhole projector is just the beginning. The official font looks like the result of a search through Microsoft Word for the script that best screams "fun". Thank God Locog started at the end of the alphabet and not the beginning, or all the Olympic signage would be written in Comic Sans.
... The [Opening Ceremony] may have been a touch too keen in its representation of the host country, however. For example, the 15,000-person army of volunteers acted as a trenchant nod to British history, since the United Kingdom is an empire built on the backs of volunteers, willing or otherwise. (The Guardian)
That's how you do it. Of course, it's the British, the English-speaking nation whose gift for sketch comedy is one of its cultural contributions the world is grateful for, even though one wonders if it's more telling about them than they care to admit that Benny Hill had his own show for four decades. It's not a nation to get into a shin-kicking snark-off with; they do the acerbic-wit thing pretty well. Besides, no one but no one takes the starch out of them better than they do themselves. London Mayor Boris Johnson went zip-lining for a photo opportunity, for pity's sake.
(I'll pause for a second while you click the link and picture whether the mayor of Canada's largest city, Toronto's Rob Ford, would try that.)
It's 2012; isn't the whole media trading pot shots based on stereotypes about a city, culture or country too obvious to really work on anyone?
Still, Canada is going to take its shots while it can. Fortunately for Rosie DiManno, she got her Brit-tweaking in during the absolute last newscycle that Great Britain was without a gold medal, although it had one by the time most people opened the newspaper.
Canada didn't come into these Games proclaiming to Hoover the hardware. What was it the Brits had predicted? U.K. Sport, the government's funding body, said it expected Team G.B. to collect 48 medals and that was at the moderate end of the spectrum. A bunch of science geeks, crunching the numbers and plotting the graphs, had touted a grand sum of 62 medals for the host nation — 25 of them gold — and fourth on the nation table.
After Tuesday's events they were tied for 11th in total medals, neck and neck with . . . why, look at this: Us.
The difference is, we always knew that at the summer version of the Olympics — unlike that glorious warm winter fortnight in Vancouver/Whistler two years ago — Canada was a softie power, modestly aiming for a top-12 overall finish here. So bronze — times four as of Tuesday night — feels grand. Silver for them — including Tuesday's three-day eventing medal out in Greenwich — feels slightly devalued, an implied "oh bother'' in the achievement.
On Tuesday, as heralded British hopefuls were circling the drain — washed out in canoe slalom, in the drink (literally) on the sailing waves, kapow-ed in judo — Canada was deftly racking up the laurels, once and yet again at the expense of Jolly Old. (Toronto Star)
Far be it to say that, two years on from the tumult of Vancouver 2010, it seems a little beneath Canadians. Every Olympics has its flaws. British PM David Cameron's "middle of nowhere" zinger directed at Mitt Romney does not apply to Vancouver, but the Summer Games truly involve many times more moving parts than the Winter Games. (Two and half times as many nations send athletes to the summer version, for starters.) Cheering for your own is always the best revenge. Britain finally does have a gold, but right after that Canada's men's eight crew, coach bumped the Brit boat down to a bronze. So there; well, as long as you ignore the crew was coached by British-born Mike Spracklen.
Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Contact him at neatesager@yahoo.ca and follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.
