My memories of Olympic Games are a mixed bag of emotions, high and low. As a Canadian and a hockey fan, the Winter Olympics have always been a bigger attraction, but the Summer Games have had their moments, too.
I suppose it was in 1988 that I started to feel jaded toward the whole shebang. After thrilling to see Ben Johnson shatter the 100-metre record in Seoul, and only later learn that he had failed a drug test and was stripped of his gold medal, I began to wonder if this was sport was coming to. If a supremely conditioned athlete could resort to using any edge a lab could cook up, what hope was there for what I wanted—competition involving athletes and not chemists.
Television coverage of the event over the years served to alienate me further, for the same reason that I eventually abandoned watching ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Skipping here, there and everywhere to catch snippets and highlights of the various events did not satisfy me, and it still doesn’t. Give me something to watch from start to finish and I become engaged. Maybe I just have too long an attention span, which doesn’t seem to be a common trait any longer.
This year, seeing continual reports of widespread use of performance enhancing substances by Russian athletes, my interest in the 2016 Games lagged. It didn’t help when the IOC did what I expected it to do, and refused to ban the entire Russian contingent from participation. Sadly, the IOC and other sports organizations have become as power-motivated and corrupt as third world dictatorship. Members weren’t about to bite any hand that feeds them.
I would describe my interest at near zero until several weeks ago when, improbably, the Canadian men’s volleyball team qualified for the Summer Olympics by winning a spot at the last possible minute. The team got some favours from other countries, and helped itself by winning some tough matches. I was thrilled, not because I am a big volleyball fan, but because Creston would have a direct connection to the Olympics for the first time in history. Gord Perrin, whose career I have followed because his dad, Dave, is a friend, is not only a player on the team, but also one of its very best. The fact that I wrote a feature story when Gord visited a few years ago didn’t hurt. I found him to be likeable, with an easy smile and none of the swagger that some pro athletes walk with.
Gord’s is a great story. He credits the strong set of basic skills he learned while playing at PCSS. He went on to do well at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, and parlayed that success into a professional career. In 2011 he made the Canadian national team and also signed to play with a team in Turkey. Last year he signed with a club in Italy, not least because it had players with Olympic experience.
So when Dave ducked through my office doorway last month to tell me he was going to Rio de Janeiro (“How could I not?”), news delivered with a mile-wide grin, I couldn’t resist asking if he could possibly send us some comments and photos while he was there. We arranged to communicate using WhatsApp, a texting program. From Facebook I knew that he, his ex-wife Ruth Boehmer and their daughter Alicia, were flying out on Saturday.
On Sunday morning my phoned beeped up me at about 5 a.m. I wake up early, so I checked and, to my delight, there was a message from Dave. They had arrived safely in Rio but, alas, Dave’s luggage hadn’t. He gave me a few more comments and then sent a photo, which I posted to the Advance Facebook site shortly after.
Then, on Sunday afternoon, minutes after I learned Canada had upset the favoured US team, another string of texts came in, with another photo. I had them on Facebook in minutes.
Now I am happily following Olympic events, not living and dying with each Canadian competitor like I did as a kid, but thrilled knowing that even if Canada doesn’t do the improbable and make it to the podium, it will have won the Canadian equivalent of a gold medal by beating an American team. And isn’t great knowing that Gord Perrin isn’t just on the Canadian team, but that he is one of their very best players?