Canada's quest to "Own the Podium" starts today.

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Well, the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics went off without a hitch today.

For the last several years, Canadian coaches and athletes have been preparing to deliver world-class performances for these Games under the project name "Own the Podium."

Own the Podium

To set the scene for you, Canada's Olympic team placed fifth in medal count at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy (7 gold, 10 silver, 7 bronze=24 medals overall). The idea is that by the end of Vancouver 2010, Canada hopes to be top of the table in medal count.

Today is when the world starts finding out how much of a success that project was.

Why can I say this? To steal from the famous commercial, "My name is Douglas, and I! AM! CANADIAN!"
(thanks be to God.)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXtVrDPhHBg[/youtube]

I'm going to be watching the games, as much as possible.

http://www.nbcolympics.com/news-feature ... s+race+u+s

Vancouver has turned it more of a home Olympics for Team USA since Canada has conceded to the medal race to the US already. Plus the US got a head start on the first day with 4 medals won setting the tone of the Games.

I think Canada is still in shock that you're Men's Hockey lose to the US on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice. Sorry but the US was gunning for redemption from Torino and they are doing so far.

US and team sports events with the title "world" in them...

Who tends to win the ice hockey, countries like Sweden.

I liked American speedskater Apolo Ohno's reply to that, when a reporter mentioned the slogan.

"Oh, they can own the podium, that's fine. We just want to borrow it for the month of February, and then we'll give it right back!"

Personally I'm content with the winning of going down a hill very fast on a tea tray.

Counting on going for gold topic

As of today, 8 gold for Canada.

I don't exactly approve of all the "nationalistic" themes -.- Useless reminder of the "them or us" philosophy.

i say - yeuch.

olympics is bad enough for jingoistic nationalism to begin with, and then canada invites disaster with its chest thumping 'own the podium' program.

wouldn't it just be better to go out and do it - you know, be better than everybody else through athletic performance, rather than boasting about it?

if it wasn't for this 'own the podium' thing, this olympics would be a massive success for canada's olympics athletes - gold on home ground, highest gold medal count, highest canadian medal count ever... but because canada did 'own the podium', it was set up to fail.

and the americans have yet another thing to make fun of us for, as they swim around in their pots of money.

-luke

To be fair, Canada does quite literally own the podium. They paid for it. They just don't get to stand on it.

Only the gold medal count, Ambivalence. Both the US and Germany beat them in the overall count, and in the silver and bronze counts, so both of those countries got to stand on the podium more.