The Lasting Legacy of the Little Blue Cow

Somehow it seems kind of appropriate that for a country of couch potatoes most of our “Olympic moments” revolved around the various TV commercials aired during the CBC’s comprehensive, if slightly over excited coverage. From the Dairy council’s Little Blue Cow vignettes, through the moronic office employee named Toffee in the Tim Horton’s commercials, to the heart wrenching stories of sacrifice from Petro Canada, we soothed our shattered psyche with the gang at CBC. When we weren’t sharing the dream; if not the gas points, Ron McLean was putting on his best game face to help us understand that winning doesn’t always mean everything. Commentator after commentator echoed the theme that personal bests, top eight finishes and oh so closes, count just as much as Gold, Silver and Bronze and possibly that’s true. But you just got the feeling that more than a few times, Brian Williams must have wanted to shout out “can’t somebody win gold once and a while around here!”

At any rate, the Greek Olympic gathering has come to an end and our athletes have returned with their booty, solving any overtime problems at Canada Customs by having very little to declare at the airport. And of course as with most Canadian activities on the World Stage, our insecure little nation begins the uniquely Canadian tradition of over analyzing the final result. With only 12 medals to hang over the national mantle the finger pointing has only just begun. Poor coaching, not enough financing, a national distaste for competition, all have been brought up as possible excuses for our less than awe inspiring performance at Athens.

Money at the moment seems to be the main focus of the diviners, who have come to the conclusion that unless we throw massive amounts of Loonies, Twonies and such into our amateur athletic programs then continual woe will be us. Even IOC grand pooh bah, Jacques Rogge got involved, suggesting he may just have to travel to Ottawa to lobby for more cash for Canada’s athletic movement, purely for our own good, helping us to avoid international shame and embarrassment in 2010. Here’s a bulletin Jacques, when it comes to asking for money in Canada, the line forms on the left and stretches as far as you can see.

No doubt funding is an issue; the simple math tells you that if your athletes are spending more time training and less time waiting on tables, then possibly the gold medal is just around the corner. But then again is it? Somehow you get the feeling that some of the countries that performed better than we did don’t have the same budget as ours, sometimes you just send some athletes who have raw talent that rises to the occasion. No amount of funding is going to change that fact. We can get closer, but we’re not going to be a dominant player in the Olympics. Canada will never be able to join the ranks of the Olympic factory nations.

The USA , China, Japan, Germany these are countries that can muster the financial resolve and cultural drive to aim for the higher spots in the World Olympic movement, we are very much what we are, a middling kind of country that should expect middling results. That’s not to say we should admit defeat and just be happy to be there, but unless we plan on creating a generation of Super athletes much like the Russians before the collapse of communism, we will just have to be happy with the occasional surprise Gold.

There are many ways we can raise more money to help our athletes compete, but dedicating a portion of the federal budget just doesn’t seem to be a high priority and nor should it. Health care, education, defence and a myriad of other national concerns will always take priority. How much trust do Canadians have in a government that has mismanaged our tax monies on the likes of the HRDC mess, the gun registry, adscam and all the other well documented abuses of our cash. For Canada to toss in more cash to the Olympic kitty, we’ll need some new ideas and non governmental options.

Tax breaks for our friends at Tim Horton’s, Petro Canada and the Dairy Board would be a start. The more they dedicate to our athletic endeavors, the better a tax deal they can get from the Government. Make helping our athletes a money making possibility and just watch how fast corporate Canada will jump on board.

Another avenue might be to take some money out of the black hole of lottery monies and allocate it to the Olympic Committee for use by our Olympic athletes, not our Olympic bureaucrats. At one time the raison d’etre for a national lottery was to fund the 76 summer Olympics. Somehow that simple idea got tossed aside when the various levels of government discovered that there was gold in them thar betting slips. If the government is serious about making changes, then let some of our “voluntary” tax dollars go to where they once were destined.

Whatever path we decide to follow, one hardly thinks pointing the fingers at our Olympians is a useful exercise. While the results may not have been what we had hoped for, we can be sure they gave it their best effort which is all we should really expect. If at the end of the day the brave band of brothers on the baseball team or young little Perdita gave it their best shot, then that’s where our pride should go. There’s no shame in not winning, only in not trying. (Though winning once and awhile can feel pretty good too!)

When the government gets around to examining the fallout of our Athens experience they can explore coaching and the bloated political end of our Olympic movement, judging by the performance of our bureaucratic contingent part of our problem may be a top heavy managerial system. Like most things involving tax dollars we seem to have far too many suits and not enough uniforms.

One final thing, I’m not an expert on many of the sports featured in the Olympics and truth be told I’m not one in any shape to lift myself off the couch and show anyone how to do something. But if the Canadian Olympic committee wants to improve our performance in Beijing in 2008, they should find out where that little blue cow trains and if he/she/it is available in four years. That cow participated in a wide variety of events and even won a gold medal in the hurdles without knocking one single hurdle down. You can’t tell me that a comprehensive training session in the cow pasture wouldn’t help put our national team on the right road to Beijing!