How about those Olympics. The games were exciting, with Canadians swimming, diving, fencing, jumping, and throwing hammers and people*, for the gold.
I’m not too sure about the CBC though. First of all, their Olympic motto was “Brave is Unbeatable”. Inspirational? Maybe. Incorrect? Definitely. If you really think brave is unbeatable you need to talk to the 50 boxers who squared up against Mike Tyson and got their blocks knocked off. You needed to be brave (or foolish) to go into the ring with Iron Mike, but they got a beat down for sure, brave but beatable figuratively and literally.
After Alysha Newman won a bronze in pole vaulting the straight-faced CBC announcer said “She’s had lots of ups and downs in her pole vaulting career.” I can’t be the only one that finds that funny? Can I?
But Canada seems to be the best in the world at throwing hammers with men’s and women’s gold in the hammer throw!* Canada has a world class hammer throw program, who knew? Maybe Mike Holmes is a coach? I threw out my back once, now I just throw back a few.
Canada women’s rugby team won silver! It was a trying competition.
The games were not without their controversy. Canada soccer coaches were caught spying on the competition and the press just droned on about it.
But Canada won high marks for their women’s beach volleyball swimsuits. Not just fashionable but also functional, the single strap top allowed freer rotation of their serving/spiking arm! Genius. Now the fashion designers are working their way from the bottom up on how to prevent those nasty sand wedgies.
JT watched the women’s beach volleyball religiously. I sent him a text one day to get an update:
RS: Hey JT, how are our women’s beach volleyball team doing?
JT: They’re looking good.
RS: What’s the score?
JT: You mean they keep score?
Canada was on a De Grasse high* after our men’s team won gold at the 400 meter relay. And 17 year old Summer McIntosh on the world stage raking in the gold, representing Canada well. How’s that for mature! What were you doing when you were 17? When I was 17 years old my ID said 18, I thought I was 19 and I had a maturity level of 15. I wasn’t representing Canada, but I was drinking Canadian.
Paris put on a class act at the closing event. Léon Marchand, the four- time gold medal swimmer for France, carried the Olympic flame in a Cornish miner’s lamp to hand over to the next Olympic venue, Los Angeles.
Perhaps a young Olympic hopeful would accept the flame on behalf of the USA? Or another 2024 gold medalist? Nope. The ceremony was immediately transformed from a high-class Paris event to a La La Land flight of fancy. The handover was from a dignified 22 year-old Paris France swimmer to a 62 year old Syracuse NY big screen celebrity, none other than Tom Cruise. The Olympic flame hand over to Nicole’s old flame.
Cruise, for a pay cheque of $2M USD, performed a mission implausible*** death defying bungy jump from the stadium rafters. It must have been a very well calculated stunt, it definitely had some Scientology behind it. Once he had the lamp Cruise then drove off on his motorcycle, facial skin immovable in the wind, as taut as a ten year old’s.
A video clip replaced the live version as he drove into a plane that took off for the land of angels. Anyone in the crowd who was lactose intolerant would have gone into anaphylactic shock at the sheer cheesiness of the stunt.****
In case you are wondering, the country with the most medals per capita was, you guessed it, Granada with 1 medal for every 56,289 citizens. Canada was 38th in that regard, while the USA with a total of 126 medals was 47th on the list. And you thought that the USA was first in the medal count.
After all was said and done our Canadian athletes did us proud and put on a great show at the Olympics. All jeering aside, all us COMDB were cheering our Olympic athletes on with cheers as we toasted them all with some cold gold.
*Editor’s Comment: Christa Deguchi won gold for throwing people (Judo). Camryn Rogers and Ethan Katzberg won gold for throwing hammers.
**Editor’s Comment: Just like “Brave is Unbeatable” Degrassi High is another CBC creation, a teen TV drama that ran from 1989 to 1991. It’s sequel, Degrassi: The Next Generation (2001 to 2009) was a CTV show. Not in any way related or to be confused with Olympic gold medalist Andre De Grasse.
***Editor’s Comment: Cruise makes between $70 to $100 Million per MI movie so the $2M for the Olympics is chump change and just helps to promote the next movie. By the way, after 206 episodes of the show on TV and the 8th Cruise movie in the planning stages, you would think by now we would all realize that the mission is not just possible, or even probable, but a 100% certainty.
****Editor’s Comment: Interestingly enough, both the press and social media were quite impressed with the Hollywood style ending to the closing ceremonies. One comment even went so far as to call Cruise “le sauveur des Olympiques” as if the games weren’t exciting enough on their own.
Since this article was published it has now been revealed that Tom Cruise did not accept any money to do his Olympic finale stunt. Could it be that this article shamed him into waiving his fee?