Watching Daniel Nestor, a former gold medalist, and his partner Frederic Niemeyer get eliminated by Great Britain's Murray brothers, it underscored the growing anxiety across the country that these Games are not going well for Canada. Sure Niemeyer was feeling the pressure of playing with the 2000 gold medalist and double-faulted twice but the key double fault was by Nestor in game 3 of the deciding set.
These Olympics, so far, are starting to look like those of the 1970s for Canada where reporting must highlight the effort and personalities, rather than the results.
True in some of the sports on the early roster, like women's badminton and men's field hockey, Canada's real victory was in qualifying for The Games. But there are the tennis doubles gone, the women's eights walloped in their heat and forced to go the repechages route (like the men's unsuccessful eights four years ago), Susan Nattrass bowing out in the early round in what might be her final Games, and all those Canadian records set in the pool but many of them falling short of advancing to the semis and finals.
It doesn't have a good feel to it, but maybe a surprise medal will get this thing turned around. Still, it's starting to show that we decided to put money into this Olympiad far too late. As mentioned every Olympics, we need a far better policy of fitness and amateur sports in this country. It's not just about medals, it's about overall national health. But medals would follow, because if you widen the base of the athletic pyramid, the top can climb much higher.
But that would require political vision, and likely more taxes. The latter we can't sell in this country, the former we can't buy.
---Steve Milton
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