For two weeks every four years, the world pretends to care about sports like Men’s Double Luge. Why? Because every event means a possible chance to add to your country’s all important final medal count. Canada put so much emphasis on this year’s Olympic medal total that they even created the ‘Own the Podium’ program, an uncharacteristically boastful title for something that originated from Canada. This past year alone, over 20 million corporate and government dollars have been funnelled into sports like snowboarding, biathlon, and curling (which got over a million dollars!). The result so far..? Umm, not so great.
But even if Canadians did reach their wildly unrealistic goal of finishing first in the medal standings, what would that mean exactly? Prior to the Salt Lake games in 2002, the Americans were heavily criticized for pushing to have X-Sports turned into Olympic events in order to inflate their medal count. Did it work? I’m not sure. I don’t remember who won... because no one remembers who wins.
If I told you that as of the halfway point tonight, a Northern European country sat in third place with a hefty 14 medals, could you tell me which one..? Is it Sweden? How about Austria or Finland? Nope, it’s Norway... but it could have easily been one of those other countries right? Because who keeps track? Do we think any more of Norway than we did before the Olympics? Probably not. (Although I am always eerily impressed with how Germany manages to do so well at both the Summer and Winter Games... let’s just say we shouldn’t get on their bad side again.)
(Because you haven't heard this song enough the past week)
Well for two weeks we pretend to before sweeping the memory under the rug and moving onto the next big distraction. Which wouldn’t be such a bad thing, except that the dedication and sacrifice it takes for an athlete to reach such heights usually prevents them having any sort of career back-up plan. You can’t help but feel that it’s our insatiable hunger for medals which made Home Depot one of the largest employers of former and current Olympic athletes in Canada and the United States.
A 1982 Czech study interviewed over a 160 Olympians and found that fewer than 20% ever made the transition to a normal life without some sort of severe emotional problem, including drug abuse. A more recent American survey pointed to many Olympians forced to retire due to serious financial issues, many living below the poverty line.
There are of course a few big exceptions; Michael Phelps and Shaun White, both managed to garner millions of dollars in endorsements after their huge Olympic success, or five-time Gold medal winning speed skater Eric Heiden, who later on became a surgeon.
But more often than not athletes fall through the cracks, sacrificing everything in order to indulge our silly little tribal fantasies. So maybe next time you watch the games, fantasizing about what it would be like to stand on the podium, take the time to wonder whether you’d really want to be in their place... after all, you yourself are going to stop clapping sooner or later.
