Six months out from a Summer Olympics, Canada has no idea what to expect.
The average fan doesn’t know who’ll be in it, what they do and or how it’s all going to work out for us. Are we any good? Is this one of those “two weeks until the first gold” sorts of Olympics?
Nevertheless, come late July and early August, this same average fan will be getting up at 4 a.m. to watch modern pentathlon, though they don’t understand what modern pentathlon is (Ed. note: Don’t feel bad, no one does).
This is one of many things that make the Olympics so great – it’s a Learning Annex for sports, and enrolment runs into the millions.
But it is nice to have a few regulars. Athletes or teams you can depend on to be there. After a while, they get to feel like overseas cousins you see only once every four years, which makes them a lot easier to like.
Canada has not traditionally been great at this when it comes to summer sports. Until now.
Over the weekend, the Canadian women’s senior basketball and soccer teams qualified for Tokyo.
In it itself, that doesn’t mean much. The Olympics are designed for maximum participation. If the goal here was to limit attendance at the first phase, they’d call them the Delympics and broadcast them on ESPN5.
But these teams are good. That’s a relatively new one for us. They’re riven through with stars and proto-stars. They’re charismatic in that especially Canadian way – a sort of high-volume modesty.
Right now, the basketball team is Canada’s “most likely to.” Most likely to make a splash. Most likely to surprise. Most likely to end up the darlings of the Tokyo Games.
They have two big things going for them – they’re proficient at basketball and have been close before without breaking through (two consecutive quarter-final losses). This team still has that new-car smell. And it’s a really nice car.
However disappointing it might be at the time, nearly getting to the top at an Olympics and failing to do so is an investment in fan interest. Once you finally do get there, people are doubly delighted by you.
Canada’s basketball team has that feel about it – a team on the verge. If you had to commit yourself right now to watching just one sport for the duration in Tokyo, this would be the one.
Plus, basketball is having a moment in this country. The Raptors got a lot of people who’d never paid any attention paying attention. They’re looking good again this year. Come July, who knows what they’ll have accomplished?
By the time the Olympics roll around, Canada’s collective basketball IQ will have gone from kindergarten level to high-school senior in the space of a calendar year.
The sport is especially alluring at an Olympics because when and if Canada does really well, it is likely that the United States will be doing less well. We like to tell ourselves that we don’t do jingoism, but we make an exception when it comes to our friends to the south. When they’re involved, we can out-jingo anyone on Earth.
That makes the soccer team the old faithfuls in this equation, the athletic comfort food of the Games. Captain Christine Sinclair may by now be Canada’s most immediately recognizable Summer Olympian.
The women won bronze in the previous two Olympics, but are best known for being jobbed out of gold at London 2012. How much has your life changed since 2012? Somewhere in a spectrum from “a lot" to "actually, I was born in that time frame.”
Back in 2012, when you heard the words “climate change,” you thought it meant rain was coming and reminded yourself to check that the windows in the bedroom were closed.
Now it gets you thinking about living out your golden years in an underground bunker. That’s how long ago that was.
And the women’s soccer team is still kicking, literally. The roster has changed, but there is an immutability about this squad. It has created an identity that isn’t tied to any particular individual. Until quite recently, the only Canadian teams you could say that about played hockey.
In terms of relatability, Olympic teams are easier to get attached to than Olympic individuals. That’s a function of scheduling. Individuals pop up for a few days – the length of their competitions from beginning to end. Team sports run nearly the entire 2 ½ weeks.
You may start out with a team you know nothing about. By the time you’re into the medal games, you know the hometowns of the backups and all their funny stories. You’ve been cramming Olympics so hard, you know everything about everyone.
A women’s team is even more alluring because we pay far too little attention to women’s sport in general. The Olympics are their big chance to grab a wider audience. In that underdog way, people want them to do well in a way that isn’t quite true of a men’s team.
(This effect is exacerbated by the fact that the Canadian men’s basketball and soccer teams are, to varying degrees, a shambles. While one of our basketball teams has been slugging toward Tokyo for ages, the best parts of the other took a pass when their names were called.)
It’s impossible to say who will define an Olympics. One day, about a hundred Canadians knew who Penny Oleksiak was – and most of them were related to her. A couple of days later, she was a more familiar face than the Prime Minister. That’s the magic of an individual performance.
But one great team can emblemize a Games without summiting the mountain. The soccer team proved that in London.
Imagine what one team that won could do? And then imagine two?
Cathal Kelly