On the front page of today's Globe and Mail you will find a story by Paul Waldie about how, halfway through the Games, Canada's Olympic medal count is not what everyone was hoping for. I think that's kind of obvious. But then the Globe goes on to say that the somewhat disappointing results might put in jeopardy the funding for future Olympic teams, since Own The Podium hasn't delivered how much it was supposed to, at least so far. "Maybe," he writes, "Canadians aren't made to swagger."

To me, it sounds like idiocy to think like that.

No doubt there have been disappointments: Kelly Vanderbeek missing the Games with a last-minute injury; Heil only a silver; Richards wiping out in moguls; Osborne-Paradis screwing up the downhill and then wiping out in Super-G; Melissa Hollingsworth hitting the wall in the Skeleton and missing the podium, and Charles Hamelin getting taken in the 500m.

But most of the failures of the Canadian Olympians in Vancouver are qualitatively different from the disappointments of the past. In the past we always said that we were really the underdog, and that our team couldn't really compete with the big countries who pile millions into training. And so we would be thrilled whenever some Canuck walked away with a bronze. In Torino, when Cindy Klassen won FIVE medals, we barely knew how to comprehend it.

This Games is different. Most of the Canadians' who have missed the podium have done so not because they have merely fulfilled our collective inferiority complex, but because they have made mistakes. BIG MISTAKES. Charles Hamelin making an error of judgment in the 500m Short Track while LEADING the field; Kristi Richards crashing in moguls because she was going TOO FAST to keep control. Manuel Osborne-Paradis wiping out in the Super-G because he was being TOO AGGRESSIVE.

These athletes aren't losing in the standard Canadian understated way--instead, they have lost because they were too aggressive, because they took one too many risks.

And I think that's FANTASTIC!

Taking risks is not often considered a Canadian trademark; playing it safe and wise is. We don't get involved in things without thinking them through first. We have a whole Senate whose only real job is to give things "sober second thought." But that attitude glosses over the true Canadian character. The original Canadians felled mammoths and fought saber-toothed tigers. French Canadian voyageurs, who opened the western fur trade, risked their lives every day. Vimy Ridge was not somewhere you went to be the underdog. Dieppe was a massive gamble, as was living anywhere north of Toronto for most of our history. And inviting millions of immigrants to rewrite our cultural and national identity was an act of courage unequalled anywhere else in the world.

I don't know about you, but I would far rather watch a Kristi Richards or a Manuel Osborne-Paradis go for broke and wipe out than play it safe and win some medal. And I hope the people who funded Own the Podium will continue to see things that way.

When Canadians fail, they should fail SPECTACULARLY! And that, in itself, is easily worth paying for.

READ THE GLOBE AND MAIL ARTICLE HERE:

PART 1: The Globe and Mail -- Saturday, Feb. 20, 2010 -- Page 1.pdf

PART 2: The Globe and Mail -- Saturday, Feb. 20, 2010 -- Page 10.pdf