An unashamed theory abounds in this Olympic city that all the gold medals Canada have won at these Winter Games — 10, as of writing — will not amount to a hill of beans if their men’s ice hockey team do not on Sunday skate to the one that really, really counts.
In Canada’s national sport/obsession/religion — as the Coke advert that drives you barmy here keeps roaring “Let’s make sure everyone knows whose game they’re playing” — the nation’s bid in the gold medal encounter to repel the young, vibrant USA team who beat them just a week ago in a qualifying round is being sold as the match to end all matches.
Thirty-three million Canadians will switch on their TVs and switch off their lives. And you fear for the nation’s collective wellbeing if their heroes put them through the wringer as they did here on Friday night when a loss of defensive focus — or was that nerve? — in the final period of their semi-final saw Slovakia come from 3-0 down and just fail to sneak an equaliser in the final seconds thanks to one inspired save from local legend, Vancouver Canucks goaltender Roberto Luongo.
Sunday’s final is expected to be the most watched event ever in a nation’s history, and arguably one of its most culturally significant moments. Canada’s greatest sporting tale in history is enshrined as that of Paul Henderson scoring the goal in Moscow’s Luzhniki Ice Palace, with only 34 seconds left, to beat the USSR in the fabled 1972 Summit Series when the Cold War collided with ice hockey.
That was an epic series in which, taking on the full might of the Soviet machine for the first time, Canada lost confidence and faith in their hockey pre-eminence with early defeats, only to keep battling and finally regain their self-belief gloriously against all the odds.
That could be the story not just of the hockey tournament here, but, actually, of the entire Games. Superstar Sidney Crosby and his multi-million dollar crew started nervously, with the defeat by the USA prompting wails of dismay, only to destroy Russia in the quarter-final and show enough resolve to hold off Slovakia 3-2.
Reflecting this, the Games got off to an infinitely sad start, with tragedy striking at the Whistler Sliding Centre even before they were officially opened, organisational woes and unhelpful weather. Yet a bit like Canada’s gradual snowballing assault on the medal table, they have grown into a towering event, one which practically demands the perfect send-off from their boys of winter.
Of course, as Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee President, acknowledged, the memory of these Games will always be tainted by the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili on an ice track at Whistler, the sheer unprecedented speed of which, even now, looks the organisers’ most terrible folly.
On Friday, the men’s bobsledders, hard men all, were still complaining about the 20 or so crashes which had occurred. “A farce,” said one German coach, while another insisted the course was just too dangerous, a too brutal test of piloting.
Which is why we should always recall Amy Williams’s victory in the skeleton as one of the great British sporting achievements, full of courage as well as skill.
The uncomfortable irony, of course, is that the faster and more dangerous the test, the more compelling the viewing. Nobody can deny here how the newer sports to the programme, the X Games favourites like the half-pipe, aerials, snowboard cross and ski cross, have instilled a youthful wow factor which the Games need.
Seeing four racers flying through the air ski-to-ski was so exhilarating it even made the traditional derring-do of the Alpine masters like Lindsey Vonn and Bode Miller seem almost staid.
Ski cross looked insane and insanely dangerous. You feel, with a certain trepidation, that it must be the future because Cypress Mountain, the most ill-starred venue with its lack of snow and excess of sludge, still rocked despite Mother Nature’s best efforts.
Vancouver, unlike the Canadian sports authorities with their absurdly-titled ‘Own the Podium’ campaign, were warm hosts and had their enthusiasm rewarded with astonishing sport and the sort of human drama which still renders the Olympics matchless theatre.
You have to love an event which can offer something so thoroughly modern and thrillingly mad as snowboard king Shaun White’s ‘Double McTwist’ and something as timelessly beautiful as ice queen Kim Yu-Na’s free skating. One which can inspire an athlete, Joannie Rochette, to skate so wonderfully just two days after her mother’s death or to persuade a cross country skier, Petra Majdic, to battle through the crippling agony of four broken ribs and a punctured lung to win bronze.
Now, at the last, Canada’s hockey men have to summon a different sort of courage, the guts to perform in the face of the knowledge that their country does not so much expect, as presume gold by divine right. Against America too, the cocky neighbours who have gleefully rented out the podium here which Canada was supposed to own.
On Wednesday, I got caught up in the throng of fans poring out of Canada Hockey Place after the host team’s crushing victory over Russia, and to a man, woman and child, they were belting out their national anthem O Canada together in the crush.
There was an extraordinary sense of uplift, a feeling of unalloyed communal pride and patriotism that you would be hard pressed to see replicated in a British arena. Sunday, for one last time, it will either make Team Canada suffocate or soar.
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