Perhaps Own The Podium has put undue pressure on Canadian athletes. If the Canadian team continues to struggle, that topic will be debated fiercely.
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Pressure of the podium could be too much to handle
- February 21, 2010 10:46 PM |
- By Erin Valois
Story provided by
By Eric Koreen, National Post
Perhaps Own The Podium has put undue pressure on Canadian athletes. If the Canadian team continues to struggle, that topic will be debated fiercely.
American skier Bode Miller has figured the whole podium thing out, though. After a disappointing performance at the 2006 Olympics, Miller has been outstanding in Vancouver.
He started with a bronze medal in the Downhill. Then came a silver in the Super-G. He finished off his Olympics in style on Sunday with a gold, his first, in the Super Combined. That medal also made him the most decorated American winter Olympian ever.
Miller downplayed the importance of winning medals before these Olympics.
"You don't want to go the Tonya Harding route of winning medals," Miller told The Associated Press earlier in the week, reference Harding, the American figure skater, who had Nancy Kerrigan attacked in order to make the Olympic team in 1994. "If you wanted just strictly to win medals, you could go through a whole long start list of racers and just go to their house in the off-season -- break a leg here, pull out a shoulder socket there -- and you'd probably have a whole bunch of medals.
Miller has proven a success. Maybe instead of Own The Podium, the Canadian Olympic Committee should have gone with the snappier, "Meh."
About the Author
- Bruce Arthur Bruce Arthur is the National Post's national sports columnist. A Vancouver native, he has been with the Post since 2001, and a columnist since 2005. He is covering his second Olympics, after the 2008 Games in Beijing. He expects these Games to be slightly less propagandistic, and for China to win slightly fewer medals.
- Joe O'Connor Joe O'Connor is a roving sports feature writer with an open-ended beat. He joined the National Post in 2002, and has spent the past seven years bouncing from sport to sport, offering fresh perspectives and delivering unique stories wherever he goes. Whether it has been getting Don Cherry to open up about his love life; George Chuvalo to talk about heartbreaking loss; or racing down the side of a mountain with former Crazy Canuck, Dave Irwin, the veteran Postie chases a story wherever it leads. Before joining the newspaper he was a two-time silver medalist at the National Magazine Awards. Vancouver will be his first Olympics.
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