The Olympics, indeed, are a unifying experience. This stood true Saturday night even for a group of reporters nowhere near Vancouver.

It was a weird night all around at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. With the Olympics justifiably drawing almost every pair of eyeballs in Canada, there was a basketball game at the arena, with the Washington Wizards visiting the Toronto Raptors. This was odd to those who have been around the team for a while: The Raptors had not hosted a regular season game on a Saturday night since February 3, 2001. The Toronto Maple Leafs usually have the facility occupied on Saturdays.

(With the game on CBC, there was a strong supply of Basketball Night In Canada jokes. Where was Don Cherry to extol the virtues of Raptors coach Jay Triano, a good Canadian boy?)

Anyway, except for the odd appearance of The Wave, this was pretty much your standard basketball game. It was what happened afterward that stuck out.

About 80 minutes after the Raptors had vanquished the Wizards, the Hamelin brothers were racing in the 1,000-metre short track speed skating final. And just like that, Basketball Night in Canada had become Short Track Night In Canada.

Of the dozen or so reporters and media relations workers in the room, all but two stopped what they were doing to watch the race. (I do believe the Washington Post's estimable Michael Lee was gobsmacked to see how this sport -- roller derby on ice, as someone described it -- had almost everyone transfixed.) However, some old-fashioned media cynicism reared its head. I was actually on the optimistic side of the spectrum when I predicted a bronze medal and an off-the-podium finish for the two Canadians. Most predicted Charles and Francois to finish fourth and fifth, one way or the other, even though none of us were anything resembling experts.

Still, this gathering had to be appreciated. Rare is the basketball game that can unite a crowd in a media room; so for an obscure sport to do so was quite astounding.

Of course, you know the result. American skater Apolo Anton Ohno passed Charles Hamelin on the last lap, and the Canadians finished fourth and fifth. One reporter even shoved a chair, sending it sliding across the room. It seemed to be a fitting way to finish what was in large a disappointing first week for the Canadian team.

"You know what the sad thing is?" one person in the room asked me rhetorically after the race. "This has all been entirely predictable."

Proof that Nikki Yanofsky's syrupy Olympic power ballad is not all-powerful: this media room, certainly, was not believing.