Canadian swimmer Summer McIntosh poses with her Olympic Games 2024 medals on Aug. 5, in Canada Olympic House in Paris.Siegfried Modola/The Globe and Mail
It’s Monday afternoon, and Summer McIntosh is taking her Paris 2024 medals on tour at Canada House.
There are four of them, so getting them on is a real process. She starts with the silver so that the three gold can overlay it. As she adds to the stack, she has to make sure they don’t bang into each other too much. There’s a lot of clanking and readjusting, leaning forward and backward and forward again. It’s a bit like watching someone strap on armour.
“I wore them around for an hour,” Ms. McIntosh says. “My neck’s hurting now.”
How heavy are they?
“I don’t know,” she says. “You can try it out.”
She pops off one of the golds and hands it over. As you balance it – and it is heavy, about three hockey pucks’ worth – it’s not like Ms. McIntosh is watching like a hawk. Her attention has wandered to the person asking her the next question.
This is when you know you’ve passed from Olympic success story to Olympic legend – you have so many medals that you feel comfortable lending some of them out.
Later, when a CNN crew wanders in and seems mildly shocked that they can’t just rock up to Ms. McIntosh on their schedule, one of the Canadian flacks delivers this immortal line: “She has a call with our Prime Minister in four minutes.”
Ms. McIntosh carries the banner, but it was a team effort. And by team, I mean women.
You will not be surprised to hear that, once again, women are saving Canada at the Olympics.
No shade on the men. They’re doing just great. Even a few medals in the pool. The men should be very proud. Keep it up.
But if our international reputation is at stake and you’ve got one competition to rescue it, call a woman. Five medals in the pool, including Ms. McIntosh’s three golds. A gold in judo (Christa Deguchi). Medals in everything from rugby to rowing to fencing. Eleven of Canada’s first 15 medals here were won by women.
We now take it for granted that Canada’s sporting honour rests on the shoulders of half the country.
It’s so commonplace that the “you get ‘em, girl” ethos of the past has become jejune in Canadian Olympic circles. It now feels too much like piling on the men, who are – bless them – trying their best.
When asked about it Monday, swimmer Kylie Masse (five medals over three Olympics) began backstroking away from the question so fast that it’s too bad Omega wasn’t there to time it.
Stuck in the middle of a long answer about how she’s part of one big gender-blind family, she said, “Right now, it feels like women are at the forefront. And they are.”
And they are.
Ms. Masse pointed out that this sort of thing “ebbs and flows,” so she didn’t want to seem too triumphal. Some day, the men may be driving the Olympic bus again.
But she didn’t sound very convincing – or convinced. Over her three Olympics, Ms. Masse has watched her female teammates amass 17 medals for Canada. This country’s swimming men have three over the same span.
There’s the law of averages, and then there’s what you’ve seen with your own eyes, and you’re bound to trust one over the other.
Not that there’s such a thing as a bad medal. Canada loves them all equally.
But since it’s just us talking here, let’s be honest: There is something indescribably charming about watching Ms. McIntosh, all long limbs and wide eyes, absolutely dominating the rest of the world. Putting a Phelpsian, Spitzian, Ledeckyian whipping on the very best. And showing nothing more than that shy grin she has.
No woo-hoo’ing or fist pumping from Canada. We beat you fair and square and then offer you a hand up. And if CNN would like to hear about it, they can get in line.
It’s like the whole world showed up and said, “Send out your best to fight our best,” and Canada looked around and said, “Yeah, we’ve got this kid over here. I don’t think she’s finished high school yet, but I would not upset her if I was you.”
From Bobby Clarke to Donovan Bailey to Summer McIntosh – that’s 50 years of Canadian sports history (and history, full stop) in three people.
We shouldn’t always count on women to save us. It’s unfair. They seem to enjoy it, but it’s a lot of pressure. Eventually, men will have to take their turn.
Every Summer Olympics, you wait for that to happen – and it doesn’t. In Tokyo, women won three-quarters of the medals. Roughly the same in Rio. They’re on pace to put up a similar percentage here.
It’s like that shorthand you have with your spouse where you just know who’s going to be driving. That person heads straight for the driver’s-side door.
When it’s time for the Summer Games, Canada’s women are taking the keys out of their pockets as they head to the airport. Directions neither required nor appreciated. They know where they’re going.
Progress has been achieved when you no longer have to tell people you’re making progress. On the women-in-sports file, there’s still work to be done to even the scale. But not at the Olympics.
We don’t have to talk about parity any more. That’s an old idea. We have reached and surpassed it. The result is a team that pushes not just our quality, but our values, out into the world. Every time another Canadian woman gets up on a podium here, she is making a statement on all our behalves.
That sort of thing is the reason we pay for all the programs that produce all the athletes, only a few of whom are good enough to be here. The ones who make it this far do more good work advertising what Canada is all about in three weeks than any other government program could manage in three years.
They are the best of us, representing every single one of us.
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