It was the epithet heard around the globe over, Canadian curlers gone wild.
“You can f–ck off,” skip Marc Kennedy informed Sweden’s Oskar Eriksson on Friday at an Olympic match in Cortina. Eriksson accused Kennedy of illegally touching a curling stone simply after he launched it. When Eriksson stated the video footage would reveal a violation, Kennedy bought even madder, denying he’s ever accomplished such a horrid factor.
The visible proof, certainly, confirmed that Kennedy’s finger seemingly nicked the stone. Then the Canadian girls’s workforce adopted go well with. Curler Rachel Homan was ruled to have also touched a stone, and an umpire eliminated her rock from play. Homan disputed the decision afterwards. “I have no idea what [the umpire] saw,” she stated. The Canadian girls’s workforce, a medal favourite, is 2-3 in spherical robin play.
A curling controversy on the Olympics? Involving America’s kindly neighbors to the north? As ridiculous as it might sound, the kerfuffle out in Cortina is a becoming illustration of how Team Canada’s Winter Olympics goes to date. Canada has a single gold medal greater than midway by way of these Milan-Cortina Games: Mikaël Kingsbury, on Sunday, gained the twin moguls occasion. As of Monday afternoon in Italy, there have been 14 nations with extra gold at these Games than Canada, together with that mountainous nation with so many ski chalets and ice tracks, Great Britain (oof).
Canada topped the charts at its dwelling Olympics in Vancouver in 2010, incomes 14 golds, and 26 medals general. In Beijing 4 years in the past, Canada once more gained a complete of 26 medals, putting fourth general. As of Monday afternoon, Canada has 10 medals general, placing the nation tied for tenth place within the whole {hardware} standings.
When Lucas Pinheiro Braathen (who grew up in Norway) gained Brazil’s first Olympic gold on Saturday, previous to Kingsbury’s triumph, Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur wrote, “the Brazilian national anthem being played at a Winter Olympics before ‘O Canada’ seems like a clerical error, as much as anything, but there it was.” A Globe and Mail headline screamed: “8 Days, 0 golds: Canada’s Olympic program heads off a cliff.”
What within the title of Doug McKenzie is happening right here?
In 2005, a consortium of Games stakeholders bought collectively and created “Own The Podium,” an funding and technical help program aimed toward producing excellent outcomes on the Vancouver Games, and avoiding a repeat of 1988, when the Canadian dwelling workforce didn’t win a single gold in Calgary. Own The Podium continues to be round, describing its focus as “building strong systems around the athletes and coaches—so they can train, compete, and recover in healthy environments that prioritize both performance and well-being.”
Canadian Olympic Committee chair David Shoemaker has been signaling a possible podium situation right here in Milan, noting Canadian athletes “are having to increasingly do more with less.” The Olympic expertise pool, based on Shoemaker, is scaling down. “With a lack of increase in federal government funding for national sports organizations in 20 years… national sports organizations have had to make tough decisions, and those tough decisions are showing up in a few different places,” he informed the Toronto Star in Milan.
Canada’s Secretary of State for Sport, Adam van Koeverden, has put out a distinct spin, as an alternative insisting that will increase within the authorities’s general sports activities spend, together with on the youth and group ranges, will assist develop increased performing athletes down the street.
But what about now? Is it too late for Canada to salvage its 2026 efforts?
Coming into Milan Cortina, Canada was second solely to solely the U.S. within the Olympic determine skating medal rely. But Canada completed fifth (out of the ultimate 5) within the workforce occasion, which is mostly a sign of the energy of the general skating program, because it includes all 4 disciplines (pairs, ice dance, girls’s and males’s). The Canadian girls’s hockey workforce has reached the semifinals, and can seemingly face its rival Team USA within the gold medal sport on Thursday. But Canada misplaced each Olympic tune-up sport to the U.S., and within the preliminary spherical in Milan, the American girls dominated Canada 5-0. If the American girls’s and males’s hockey groups someway sweep Canada in each gold medal video games, President Donald Trump might have a subject day. Trade wars and threatening to dam the Gordie Howe International Bridge opening may simply be the start.
Ironically, Canada’s hope might hinge on the cursing roller: Kennedy’s workforce is 4-1 in spherical robin play.
If the Olympics finish in disappointment, a minimum of Canada can look in the direction of soccer forward of this summer season’s World Cup, because it joins Mexico and the U.S. as one in every of three host nations. But Canada is making simply its third ever males’s World Cup look. Its highest end is twenty fourth.
Global soccer, it seems, is one other robust podium to personal.
— with reporting by Alice Park