Wednesday August 20th, 2008

The exercise:

Watching Simon Whitfield win Silver in the triathlon at this year's Olympics reminded me of another great Canadian Olympic moment I was lucky enough to experience. So today's writing "assignment" is to describe an Olympic moment that made you proud to be from wherever it is you happen to be from.

Mine:

In the 2002 Winter Olympics, both the Canadian men and women's teams won hockey gold. Despite it being our unofficial national sport, it was the first time the men had managed to win the big one in fifty years. And I wasn't home to watch it.

I was backpacking around Europe at the time and hadn't really caught much of the Olympic coverage. But on the big day I happened to be at a hostel in Interlaken, Switzerland where several other Canadians also were staying. And when word got around that Canada was playing the USA for hockey gold, and the Americans staying at the hostel found out, well it couldn't be anything but a memorable evening.

We gathered in the hostel's TV lounge (with a bar at the back), the Canadians at one table, the Americans at another. Being out-numbered we thought it wise to recruit a few British backpackers to our side, although I seem to recall one of them defecting to the Americans about halfway through the game.

Canada went up two goals to one and we started doing some rather un-Canadian trash talking, which I still believe directly led to the Americans tying it up shortly afterwards. It was at this point that the night took a turn for the better.

"You guys want to make a bet?" asked one of the Americans. Well, of course we did. "Losing country buys the winning country a round of beers."

Suddenly the stakes were high. This was about more than winning gold. This was about beer.

When Joe Sakic scored to put Canada up 3-2 we erupted. When Brodeur made a huge save to keep the lead we erupted. When Sakic scored Canada's fifth goal to seal the win we made enough noise for five times the number of people that were actually there.

The Americans were true to their word and soon we had beers in hand. A Canadian flag appeared out of nowhere and suddenly we were arm in arm, wrapped in our flag, singing our national anthem, a small part of Canada nestled into the mountains of Switzerland.