VANCOUVER — Hearing a Canadian attempt to talk smack is so hilarious it’s enough to make an American visitor to the Winter Olympics spit Kokanee beer through his nose.
“These are our Games. We will own the podium,” announced Marcel Aubut, a big shot with the Canadian Olympic Committee.
Oh, Canada. Stop it.
In a cold, driving rain that was bad to the bone, American skier Hannah Kearney finished first in the moguls competition, reducing Jennifer Heil to tears, denying her the chance to be the first Canadian in history to win a gold medal on home soil.
“I know (Heil) is disappointed. I feel for her. But I wanted that gold medal,” Kearney said Saturday.
Woe, Canada.
Please, leave the trash talk to the trained experts: Americans.
I asked Californian Shannon Bahrke, who won the bronze, if the U.S. was intimidated by Canada’s home-snow advantage.
“No way!” Bahrke shouted, her voice making fog in the damp air. “We’ve been kicking some butt.”
Ever hear 34 million people of a country beat chests in unison? Or cry at once? “All I can say is that gold medal is coming,” said Heil, tears rolling down her cheeks.
The Winter Olympics has done something strange to the Canadian national psyche. The local newspapers in Vancouver are treating medals like manifest destiny, with The Sun shaking pompoms and declaring in a big, red headline: Go Canada Go.
“Canada is finally more concerned with winning than being nice,” U.S. comedian Stephen Colbert said on his television show, “hence the new Olympic slogan ‘Own the Podium’ — in contrast to their previous slogan: ‘Pardon, would it trouble you if we won a medal or two? It would? OK, never mind.’ “
What in the name of the Great White North is going on here?
Everybody with an inkling of what “8:30 Newfoundland” means knows Canadians are born terminally polite.
In most provinces of this humble, beautiful land, declarative statements have been treated as something between rude and illegal, to the point where many locals punctuate the end of every sentence with “right?” just in case you disagree with a Canadian’s observation that the sky is blue.
Stick to the sports traditions you know, Canada. Like growing a beard during the Stanley Cup playoffs. Or plugging the car into an electrical outlet from Thanksgiving to Easter.
For years, many of us in the Lower 48 believed that the biggest threat from Canada was socialized medicine that might creep across the border under cover of darkness.
“This America-Canada thing? Hey, we’re friends. We speak the same language,” said Mike Plant, chef de mission for the U.S. Olympic team in Vancouver. “But they have put an emphasis on instilling Canadian pride in their entire population to show (they’re) as good as everybody else in the world.”
Like a red-headed stepchild sick and tired of being ignored, Canada is picking a fight with the USA. Every time I turn on the television here in British Columbia, it seems the same song by the Mike Plume Band is drawing a battle line with these lyrics: “Yankees call us Canucks. But together we will never stand alone.”
Chill out, Canada.
We had let you be good at hockey, because nobody in the USA within tobacco-spitting range of a NASCAR oval really cared, although it must be added that no NHL team from Canada has actually raised the Stanley Cup since Montreal in 1993.
During the past five years, Canadians have poured $120 million earmarked to help finish first in the medal count. Buy success? How positively Yankee of them.
Why does Canada feel a burning need to be like the USA? The country has traditionally had a lower crime rate than ours. Dr. James Naismith, who invented basketball, was a Canadian. So there’s no need for this inferiority complex.
Imitating us with smack talk? Chest-thumping? Seems like a bad idea.
After the USA dominated the first big showdown of the Games, let me be the first to tell Canada:
Take off, eh?
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
