Spectator holds up an umbrella with the Canadian flag in support of Erynn Ballard of Canada riding Nikka VD Bisschop at the equestrian jumping individual qualifier on Aug. 5.Zohra Bensemra/Reuters
As a nation defined by its hammer throwing, it’s important that Canada projects strength. We don’t avoid problems. We fling them away from us with great vigour.
Watching Canadian Olympic Committee CEO David Shoemaker playing fun and games on a closing Sunday with the idea of whether Canada’s Olympic outfit is privately funded or private-publicly funded and how the government should give it more money in either case, you get the sense of how the people in charge think: sport above all things.
At Paris 2024, Canada tested the limits of that approach.
The Games part of the Games was an enormous success. In an era of athletic expansionism, Canada is keeping pace. Nine golds and 27 medals – a contemporary high-water mark – isn’t as important as our place in the world. Eleventh on the medal table in the previous Summer Olympics, and 12th in this one. We’re no Italy, but we have once again proved our superiority over Uzbekistan.
It’s the most medals in summer since the compromised Games at Los Angeles 1984 (though this event was compromised in a similar way).
That prompted the COC’s sports chief, Eric Myles, to declare: “This is our best Games.”
Maybe so, which makes the rest of it a bummer.
It’s difficult in the immediate aftermath of an Olympics to say what will define them in the national memory, but it’s always one thing. Atlanta 1996 is Donovan Bailey and nothing else. Other things happened and were huge stories at the time. But they have been lost in the endless tide of Canadian sports news. Mr. Bailey was the moment.
What’s the moment this time around?
Summer McIntosh should be the bookies’ favourite – an all-timer performance by a teenager who played it on the podium like she’d just won the same weekend swim meet three times.
The gold-medal hammer-throwing duo of Camryn Rogers and Ethan Katzberg would be another great pick. The yin and yang of it; the oddity of the sport; the charm of the winners.
A late-breaking possibility was the men’s 4x100-metre relay team. They did provide the quote of the Games, via Aaron Brown: “This is the Mona Lisa. We’re in Paris, right? Hang it in the Louvre.” But the rule of firsts applies. The first thing to happen is the most memorable. And the first thing you’re asked about after it ends reinforces that impression.
That first in both instances was the Canada Soccer spying scandal.
It will live on because, unlike all the medals Canada won, it is stupid. Stupid in its conception, stupider in its execution and then stupid in its aftermath. It’s one big Indiana Jones boulder of stupidity. People love stupid, especially when it’s coming from people who are smart.
On Sunday, the COC was still using its communications judo to push it aside.
In the opening remarks, it was referred to obliquely as one of several “surprises” (Tricia Smith, COC president). For Mr. Shoemaker, it’s the “situation.”
“The athletes themselves have done an enormous amount to remedy that situation,” Mr. Shoemaker said.
Have they?
It’s a bit rich to suggest that the people who haven’t cheated have made it okay for the people who have by winning. This suggests that achievement is analogous to morality. Or at least that it balances the scale.
It doesn’t. Canada screwed up in Paris. Everyone else kept their hands clean. The closest the United States came to a scandal was a snit between gymnasts. Only Canada had two bad ones – cheating at the Games and having a coach accused of sexual assault and harassment on the logistical books at track and field.
As The Globe and Mail’s Paul Waldie put it to Mr. Shoemaker on Sunday: “Did we own the podium when it came to scandal?”
Mr. Shoemaker appeared to take offence, and one wonders why. It’s not as though he’s accused of doing anything wrong. Otherwise, the question is clear on its face. The right answer is, ‘Yes, we did.’
So own it.
Canada did some wonderful athletic things in Paris, and it also screwed up big time. If the point of having an Olympic team is to burnish the national image among our international peers, the two things don’t equal out.
Instead of congratulating themselves on another administrative act of collective genius or asking for more money – a constant theme with this group – maybe grapple with that a little.
People will forgive you for anything if you apologize. Doesn’t matter what you did. People want to let you off the hook. This is a lesson sports executives seem incapable of accepting. Maybe because it’s been a years-long knife fight to get where they’re at.
Someone needed to stand up in front of Canada and take the blame, even if they specifically are blameless. Especially if they are blameless. That makes it so much more impactful.
No one could do that here. In the midst of it, it was just deflect, deflect, deflect. You could see the HR instincts take over immediately.
Everything about the mid-Games process in both instances was opaque. The only reason we know why national women’s soccer team head coach Bev Priestman was sent home was because FIFA spilled the beans.
By the end, the hope was that it would all be forgotten.
It never is. You could flesh out the old adage about it being the cover-up that kills you … because that’s the part that makes the best news story. Canada kept serving up news stories that lasted for days. Both overshadowed some remarkable performances.
Nobody said it, but it must have been a real gear-grinder for many athletes, standing there after a lifetime memory, answering questions about something they had nothing to do with.
On Sunday, the COC leadership was asked about its plans to avoid similar scandals in the future. Mr. Shoemaker began listing off all the things the COC already does.
A different sort of outfit might feel strange bragging about how it is one of the only countries in the world to do background checks on full-time staff, when that process failed miserably here.
But that’s Canada at the Olympics. We go big – even when we’re headed in the wrong direction.
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