We're almost a week in, and I'm feeling Olympian. Well, not quite. I am heroically wrestling with a minor cold, and unlike your basic Olympic athlete, I can load up on as much cold medication as I want. I can dope myself to kingdom come. Sinutab, Buckley's, dark beers, you name it.
VANCOUVER -- We're almost a week in, and I'm feeling Olympian. Well, not quite.
I am heroically wrestling with a minor cold, and unlike your basic Olympic athlete, I can load up on as much cold medication as I want. I can dope myself to kingdom come. Sinutab, Buckley's, dark beers, you name it.
But I am beginning to be subsumed by the Olympic mindset.
When I swim through the crowds that seem to fill every sidewalk, I imagine I am fighting my way through a cross-country mass start. When the crows have thinned and there are fewer of us walking in the same direction, I pass fellow travelers like a short-track speed skater, though admittedly there is less of a chance I could lose a finger.
And when I am alone, at the head of the imaginary pack, I I try to take the right line, like the slowest, most inappropriately outfitted downhill skier that ever lived. Turn that corner! Carve that turn! Stop to tie your shoe! You could get hurt!
But beyond my minor version of Stockholm's Syndrome, there's more to this than just one sportswriter with a surgically repaired ankle.
Somewhere out there, the unkindled spark in some kid is being lit by one of our athletes; some snowboarder has just decided they want to be the next Maelle Ricker, or some skier wants to be Alex Bilodeau, just as Clara Hughes, lost and aimless once upon a time in Winnipeg, set her trajectory upon seeing Gaetan Boucher fight to the end of his final lap.
It's too late for me, really. But not for everybody.
