Vancouver Twenty Ten

This Winter Olympics thing is finally catching up with me.

For some reason I hadn’t been that excited about it until right now. I think it had something to do with being in the complete wrong time zone for it and being utterly convinced that the Japanese media was only ever going to cover Japanese athletes.

But I’m thinking maybe all of that was a defensive snowjob. You see, I’ve been a big fan of the Winter Olympics for as long as I can remember (Albertville? Lillehammer?). I think it was an outgrowth of the infatuation with snow I’ve seemingly had for my entire life. However, it also might have been that I was young and impressionable at that wondrous point back in 1992/4 when the IOC decided that it would stagger the winter and summer Olympics, meaning there would be a games every 2 years, and in ’92 and ’94 there would be back-to-back Winter games.

I remember trying to emulate the bobsledders on my GT Snowracer. I remember all the guys using the minitramps in elementary school to emulate the acrobatics of Canadian Aerials/Moguls Freestyler Jean-Luc Brassard. I remember being amazed at the chimeric fusion that was biathlon, with the combination of guns and snow seeming to be tailor made for the mind of a kid like me. And names like Myriam Bédard, Ed Podivinsky, Kerrin Lee Gartner, Elvis Stojko, and Alberto Tomba still hold places in my head that should probably be reserved for hockey greats.

Where was I?

Defensive snowjob. Right.

For all my love for the Winter Olympics, my spirit has been pretty lackluster this year. That seems like madness as Canada is hosting the games in the city that I keep describing to people over here as the most beautiful one in our nation. What’s more, the second half of the games is taking place in a mountain town that competes with Pacific Rim and Algonquin for the title of one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen in North America. Not only do I love both locales dearly, I have fantastic friends permanently located in BOTH cities. Hell, I’ve even got a pair of those phenomenal red Canadian Olympic mittens that were sent over from my aunt to make sure I could be a part of the Olympic spirit.

It all stacks up to a pile of Olympic fever on paper. So why haven’t I been into it?

I think my disinterest must have been a vain attempt to guard against the remorse I’m feeling now. As I read Allison and Amy’s facebook updates and stare at their pictures from the two raging hearts of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic games, it becomes clear what I’m missing and just how close I could have gotten to the games. The two of them are a couple of my closest friends, and to share my very favourite of sporting events with them, at home in Canada…calling it something as highfaluting as a “once in a lifetime” opportunity still fails to capture the all of it. Never again will this opportunity arise.

Never Again.

But I suppose I should take heart. It would seem that my bread and butter these days is Never Again. I likely couldn’t have had both the Olympics and Japan. To trade two weeks of patriotic Canadian wonder for two years of hedonistic Japanese adventure may not be such a bad bargain.