Canada's Best Winter Olympics

Okay, this is probably my first non-political post and maybe my last for some time, but I really felt I had to comment on Canada's outstanding performance at the Winter Olympics in Turin. While I know many were disappointed that Canada's Men's Hockey didn't medal or world champion speed skater, Jeremy Witherspoon didn't either, we won 24 medals coming in third place ahead of both Norway and Russia while only one medal behind the Americans and 5 behind the Germans. This is our best ever showing in the Winter olympics and our second best ever in any olympic (our best was 44 medals in 1984 in Los Angeles, but that was because the Eastern bloc countries boycotted the games). This is great news for Canada and I am optimistic we will do even better when Canada hosts the games in 2010 right here in Vancouver. Our goal for 2010 was to have the most medals of any country and to win 30 medals. Based on how well we did here, I believe we can do it. More importantly, I am positive Canada will end its reign as being the only country to host an olympic games that didn't win a gold medal when hosting it. Certainly we were strong in speed skating, but I also want to pay tribute to how strong the women did compared to the men. Back when Nancy Greene medalled in 1968, women competing in the olympics was rare and even rarer to medal. Today, almost half of our olympic team are female. More importantly 2/3 of Canada's medal were won by female athletes, so bravo to the women. If only our men performed as well as our women we would have come first in medal standings. On a final note, I should send my congratulations to all medalists regardless of which country they represented. The olympics is not just about winning, it is also about sportsmanship and peace between nations through sport. Finally congratulations to all those who just made it to the olympics. Very few people make the olympics. Being an olympian requires incredible sacrifices in the amount of time one must give up to spend training, yet despite the time, most athletes live below poverty unlike the millionaires in professional sports. Finally on a political note, I fully agree with what Denis Coderre said a week ago in response to Peter Julian who said funding to the olympics should be to the point that it comes at the expense of our social programs. His rebuttal was funding the olympics actually provides savings to health care in the long-run as the more people become involved in sports, the healthier people are and the less likely they are to use our health care system.