Oh, Canada! Canada warms up to Winter Games By Jennifer Harrison

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The Salt Lake City Winter Olympics begin in just over a week, and advertisers have begun to skillfully tug at Canadian heartstrings. Flipping on the TV, I watched a Coca-Cola commercial declaring itself the official sponsor of the Canadian Olympic athletes.

It was filled with a sequence of images of Canada's favorite pastime: hockey. Fans screaming in the stands, faces and bodies painted with the red Maple Leaf, little kids playing road hockey, etc. etc. By the end of it, I was in tears, my heart swelling with Canadian pride.

Good old CBC (The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) has begun its faithful and comprehensive coverage from Salt Lake, and daily newspapers are beginning to focus on Olympic stories. Thus far, much of it has been on discussion of the security measures, but focus is starting to shift toward individual athletes and Canada's outlook for medals.

One event where the outlook is good is snowboarding. The male snowboarder that everyone is talking about is Jasey Jay Anderson. Anderson won the giant slalom title at the 2001 World Championships and the 2001 overall World Cup title. Like many young Canadians, Jasey learned to snowboard as a child, in the province of Quebec. (Jasey did not, however, play hockey, which makes him something of a rarity.)

Exhibiting a cleaner and more professional image than the notorious Ross Rebagliati, another Canadian snowboarder, who had his gold medal stripped at the Nagano Olympics after he tested positive for drug use, many believe that Jasey Jay could win the gold in Salt Lake.

The female snowboarder that people are watching is polish-born Natasza Zurek. Natasza recently placed as Canada's top rider in the halfpipe. She also won another very important event in the United States, pushing out two winners from Nagano. Despite some rather nasty knee injuries that have required many months of rehabilitation, Zurek insists that snowboarding has changed the direction of her life. "Since day one, I was completely obsessed with it, and every day since then, I live to ride. If I couldn't snowboard anymore, it would be like losing both legs and one arm."

At the other end of the spectrum is, in my opinion, one of the weirdest sports ever invented: curling. Curling is another sport that Canadians excel in. In the Nagano Olympics, where it was first introduced as an official Olympic sport, our women's team won gold. This year, Kelley Law from British Columbia is the big contender. She won the National and World Championships in 2000.8Curling is basically a big game of marbles on ice. The point of the game is to slide a big shiny stone into the bull's-eye at the end of the ice surface, knocking your competitor's stones out of the way. One player releases the stone in a bowling-like slide, while other players use brushes to polish the ice surface to assist the stone on its way down the ice.

It's a freaky game, and many of those who play don't seem to want to make it known, but what can I say? Canadians are good at it, and those closet curlers will be cheering along with the games when they are televised.

You might think that Canadians would be really excited to watch Olympic hockey, considering its prevalence in our society. However, I think it's safe to say that Canadians are only really passionate about National Hockey League games Ereal rock 'em, sock 'em hockey that packs a punch. Olympic hockey is too polite. 11 Although Team Canada hasn't won the Olympic gold for 50 years now, an astounding number of hockey players on most NHL hockey teams were born, raised and learned to play the game in Canada.

Many Canadians, although they would sell their own mother to have Team Canada win, cheer for different countries, based on the NHL players that those teams have. For example, Mats Sundin, captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs, is playing on the Swedish team. It's not really cheering for the Swedes, but many will be cheering for the Leaf on the Swede team.

Nevertheless, when I'm catching any Olympic action on TV, I'll still be crying at the Coke ads with the cheering fans and waving Canadian flags.

Shukan ST: Feb. 8, 2002

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