Witness the leaders debate on the eve of the annual Stanley Cup pilgrimage. The party kingpins were shown getting off buses, out of limousines, jauntily waving to the crowd on the arena’s threshold in the winter nation’s capital.

It looked a lot like the Canucks or the Hawks on their way into the rink moments before a much anticipated playoff rivalry. They had a photo op, shook hands… just like the hockey gods do before a big international match.

Heck, the show cobbled together around the buildup to the gabfest was even called ... “Countdown to Debate.” 

Sound familiar?

The pundits who analyzed the confrontation prior to the festive faceoff spoke of someone trying to land a “…knockout blow.” Or that maybe Prime Minister Stephen Harper might be “…the target of a power play and end up a punching bag for the other three.”

The analogies were flying around like Guy Lafleur when the mighty Habs took on Don Cherry’s battling Bruins.

Speaking of which, the party leaders knew they were overmatched in Quebec and moved the French language debate to avoid a conflict with Game 1 of the Boston-Montreal series. 

You’ve got to give the politicians credit for pragmatism on that one.

“We all know hockey is very popular in Canada and also in Quebec,” granted Gilles Duceppe, the leader of the Bloc Quebecois.

Hello!

“I think it would be a better choice to have that debate on Wednesday so that people who like hockey will have the full opportunity to see the debate and then listen to the hockey game on Thursday night,” Duceppe continued.

Translation…everyone with a TV!

It’s like Roch Carrier, one of French Canada’s most popular writers said of life in Quebec in his timeless story, The Hockey Sweater.

“We lived in three places — the school, the church and the skating rink — but our real life was on the skating rink,” wrote Carrier. “The real leaders showed themselves on the skating rink.”

When it comes to the postseason and a concurrent election campaign in Canada that axiom still holds water.  Watch how many of the party leaders show up to shake a few paws whenever the Canadiens or Canucks hit the ice at home in Montreal or Vancouver.

Good politics in this country means getting close to the power of the puck.

It takes the Olympics, long an archaic “old boys” institution, that much closer to an equality of the sexes. 

Ski jumping and Nordic Combined were the last holdouts on a competition program, which had discriminated against females since the Winter Games began in Chamonix in 1924.

Now Nordic Combined remains the last hurdle to leap over.

“I hope we’re beyond the days when people thought there were physiological differences that prevented women from competing in sport,” says Dru Marshall, the chair of the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women in Sport and Physical Activity (CAAWS).

Marshall is also the Deputy Provost at the University of Alberta and the former national women’s field hockey coach.

“This is a powerful statement by the Olympic committee,” Marshall stresses.  “It moves towards gender equity at the Games at a time when women are more involved in physical activity and sport than they have been at any period in history. These women will be terrific role models.”

It’s been a long road to get here and not without major bumps.

The only females to appear at the first Winter Games in Chamonix were figure skaters. Sports integral to the Olympics such as cross country skiing and speed skating didn’t see women compete until 1952 and 1956 respectively. The men have always been in at the very beginning. Olympic women’s hockey is as recent as Nagano in 1998 and women’s bobsleigh first appeared at the 2002 Salt Lake Games.

Balance is finally on the horizon, even though it’s taken court battles for women to claim their share of the spotlight. There have been myriad questions about depth and quality of competition. Two failed bids for Olympic inclusion and challenges to the B.C. Supreme Court as well as the Supreme Court of Canada have meant plenty of disappointment for a generation of aspiring female ski jumpers.

“They have shown great tenacity and courage in the face of adversity,” says Marshall.  “We’re getting close.  At the last two Olympics about 44 percent of the athlete population was female.”Amen to that.

There’s plenty of room for men and women to compete in all sports on the Olympic field of play. 

But with the calendar having flipped into spring, the sweet season for Canadian sport is in full swing. Bone chilling temperatures notwithstanding, there’s much to feast on. Coast to coast to coast and everywhere in between, plenty to cheer for at this time of changeover.

The “Boys of Summer” will make their way north soon. “March Madness” reigns south of the border. These are encouraging signs of deliverance from the depths of long, cold nights, which have dominated the first months of 2011.

Still, we hope the ice will linger…it runs through our veins.

Our national obsession is entering the critical phase. The Stanley Cup playoffs are preceded by the annual run to the postseason … the desperate drives cobbled together by ambitious teams with fanatical backing. So the Canadiens and Canucks are home and cool but the Leafs and Flames still have fires to put out. 

It makes for great hockey drama.

The national pastime of curling has emerged from Canadian arenas to compete on the World stage. Prairie rinks from Regina and Winnipeg have steadfast missions to assure us all that we are still the international frontrunner in this enticing game of skill and precision.

Amber Holland and Jeff Stoughton face a subliminal pressure where winning is taken for granted and losing is a dire warning that something so intrinsically Canadian is slipping away.

Curling has kept us company through the long winter. Victory at the World’s is a sure sign of spring.
The national passion of figure skating will also witness its culminating event. The World championships will happen, albeit deeper into the season than anticipated. 

Canadians are at the forefront. The national men’s champion, Patrick Chan, has an inside track on the title.  Like Jackson, Orser, Browning, Stojko and Buttle, Chan has designs on the top of the podium. This is not to mention ice dancers, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, hoping to return from injury to defend their crown.

Figure skating promises Canadian tradition at this time of year.     

All of this points to an extension of the cold season to allow our obsession, our pastime and our passion to work their magic.

In our minds we’re still stuck in winter. But as Canadian sports fans it’s the springtime of our content.

They should get on with the World championships in another country and do it as soon as possible. 

Cancelling or postponing until October when Tokyo may or may not be ready should not be viable options.
The situation in Japan makes it impossible for Tokyo to host at present.

With all due respect, the priority of every Japanese authority should involve the safety of the people of that country. The focus should be on healing wounds, repairing the damage, feeding the thousands of homeless and beginning the process of reconstruction.

By respectfully moving the championships to a neutral site, the ISU would be acknowledging that figure skaters in Japan are adored, sometimes worshipped figures that may, if allowed to showcase their talent, play a small part in the recuperation of the national psyche during a time of crisis.

This should not be about logistics or whether or not the championships can turn a profit.

Instead this should be about sport playing the part it claims it can in the lives of ordinary people. Namely, that the gifted athletes become the embodiment of their proud nations and serve to inspire the masses with their uplifting performances.

Mao Asada, twice a World Champion, and her teammate Miki Ando who has also held the crown, along with the current men’s champion Daisuke Takahashi, are superstars in Japan. They are followed wherever they travel by a crush of media. Back home, their millions of disciples anxiously crave word of their successes.

In this case, the efforts of the Japanese skaters become, symbolically at least, crucial, as people all over Japan desperately need something to cheer for.  In other words, if athletes really are role models then let the Japanese skaters fulfill their potential at the appointed hour.

The excuse that a venue, enough hotel rooms or volunteers cannot be found in a limited time is hogwash.  In a time of crisis anything can be done. Where there’s a will there’s a way and if need be all the proceeds from ticket sales should be directed to the relief effort in Japan.

Figure skating has a chance to make a difference right now.

The ISU should respectfully get on with the world championships and demonstrate that sport still has clout beyond the bottom line.

While we rejoice in 14 gold medals and 26 podium results, the close encounters are more indicative of a seismic shift in expectations on the part of Canadian competitors.

Almost winning doesn’t count anymore, which is a good thing for a country that fancies itself a sporting nation.

Five fifth place finishes at the 2010 Games warrant re-examination.

Melissa Hollingsworth ended up fifth in skeleton over the course of four heats - a mere half second from the gold medal performance Great Britain's Amy Williams. It was a miniscule margin of defeat that left Hollingsworth distraught, declaring, “I let my entire country down.” 

But Hollingsworth soldiered on, and instead of quitting she committed herself to the journey to Sochi in 2014. In eight World Cup races this season, she’s been on the podium three times and is ranked third in the world.

“It stinks,” Patrick Chan said after finishing fifth in figure skating. But then again he learned something.

“I saw that one day I could dominate my sport.” 

Now Chan is the Grand Prix champion, has the quad jump in his arsenal and has the inside track on next month’s world championship in Tokyo.

On the last day of the Games in the biggest cross-country ski race, the 50K marathon, Sudbury’s Devon Kershaw was fifth, 1.6 seconds from gold. He got lost in the dust of the Sidney Crosby goal and the men’s hockey victory.

“That opportunity is gone forever,” Kershaw said of that ordeal. “But it was the most motivating thing that could ever happen to me.” This season in the massive Tour de Ski, Kershaw scored his first World Cup victory and found the podium four times in eight races.
Finally, there’s alpine skier Erik Guay. 

Fifth in both the Downhill and Super G at Whistler, Guay missed two gold medals by the sum total of eight-tenths of a second, or the blink of an eye.

He wasn’t the hottest interview afterwards. But he did collect himself to score three podium results and win the Crystal Globe to end the campaign. He’s also the only Canadian to win a medal on this year’s World Cup circuit.

That’s the legacy of Vancouver, plain and simple.

Nowadays for Canadian athletes this business of finishing fifth equals one thing.

Unfinished business.

It was heartening this week to hear straight from the horse’s mouth that Olympic gold medallists and world champions in the ice dance, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, are returning to the field of play.

“We will be back at Four Continents in two weeks and I can’t wait to compete again,” Moir said via e-mail from the training base in Canton, Michigan.  “We still have the fire and I hope it will last for many more years.”

That Virtue and Moir have committed to compete at the Four Continents Figure Skating Championships in Taipei is welcome news. In October, she underwent a second surgery on her shins and calves in the space of two years to relieve the pain of Chronic Exertional Compartment Syndrome, (CECS). Now it appears they are determined to qualify for the World Championships in Tokyo with a view to defending their crown.

“We wanted Tessa to be healthy,” Moir stressed. “That became our number one priority and we knew the surgery was 100% necessary. Still, it is always frustrating for an athlete not to be able to perform.”

Last February, in winning the Olympic gold medal in Vancouver, Virtue and Moir delivered one of the greatest performances in the annals of figure skating. It’s been compared favorably to Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean’s historic win at the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo, which featured an icy rendition of Bolero.

Virtue and Moir are still young, both in their early twenties, and could achieve unprecedented success in their sport. While Torvill and Dean won four consecutive world championships, they did not repeat as Olympic champions. Indications are Virtue and Moir, will try to raise the bar on both accounts, given that the world championships in the year prior to the Sochi 2014 Games will be held in their own backyard in London, Ontario.

“I will gladly share my thoughts on this,” Moir said. “Tackling a post Olympic season is very tricky, especially after the success we had last year. However, we are just as hungry, if not more than we have ever been. I am very motivated by the challenge of repeating as world champions.”

That sounds definitive.

The talk of a champion revived who will never say die.

Maybe it’s because The Great One has been the first truly remarkable hockey player to mature in such a public fashion. More than a generation of Canadians clearly recall him as the prodigal son. He was the magician who transported Edmonton to the centre of hockey’s universe. He had the Midas touch.

“He was playing a man’s game, but he was a boy,” says Kelly Hrudey, an Edmonton native and longtime teammate of Gretzky with the Los Angeles Kings. “But I think he changed and made himself so much better.”

Indeed, Gretzky represents the last dynasty, the boy who became king in more ways than one.
A nation watched him weep at being traded, some say sold, in order to fashion the gold rush to hockey’s sunbelt. There was the spectacle of a wedding to a Hollywood personality. 

Gretzky, mimicking Peter Pan, took Los Angeles close to the Stanley Cup and made the world take notice of Canada’s beloved game.

Even in his declining competitive years when Gretzky migrated to Broadway, the mystical powers that allowed him to be at the right place at exactly the right time were still evident.

Somehow, as hockey’s finest players were allowed to take part in the Olympics in 1998, The Great One was left on the bench at a defining moment for Canada and a loss to the eventual champions from the Czech Republic ensued.

It’s tough to recall that moment. It was maybe the last gasp of his youth gone in a whisper. But he held his head high and soldiered on.

In retirement, Gretzky led Canada to Olympic gold but couldn’t translate his genius as coach of the Phoenix Coyotes. Now, he is rarely seen nor heard, perhaps reveling in the quiet time he has earned. But a landmark birthday causes his glory to be paraded out for a lightning quick period of reflection and admiration.

“He was the best, no doubt about it,” says Kelly Hrudey. “He had no faults as a player and even better qualities as a human being.”

Still there is a nagging sense of disbelief. 

The Great One has made the journey from child star to distinguished hockey elder much too soon. It is the fleeting nature of superstardom.

So it is that the Brier, which pits province against province, becomes paramount in the sport of curling.  For Canadian women, the Tournament of Hearts is equally as treasured. There are many Canadian “cups” to be won — lacrosse has the Mann and the Minto, while junior hockey has the Memorial. They are all national gatherings that crown the best from various regions of a diverse land.

It’s hard to beat the tradition and scope of the Canadian figure skating championship. 

“It defines the excellence of our sport,” says Debbi Wilkes of Skate Canada. She’s a two-time national champion in pairs competition and won a silver medal at the 1964 Innsbruck Olympics with her teammate Guy Revell.

“The Canadian championship is the culmination of participation and achievement,” Wilkes continues. “It’s the discovery of what hard work can mean.”

At this year’s Canadian figure skating championship in Victoria, 300 skaters ranging in age from 12 to 26 will compete for national titles. They’ve emerged from 1,200 clubs across the country and represent the elite of more than 180,000 registered figure skaters coast to coast to coast.

“That means when we introduce a winner here as the ‘champion of Canada’ it really carries weight,” Wilkes stresses.

And while Patrick Chan and the stars of international acclaim will receive the lion’s share of the attention, there are many more winter warriors who covet victory on Canada’s main stage of skating.

“It’s precious,” says Tracy Wilson. 

She is a seven-time national champion, an Olympic medallist in ice dance, a coach and broadcaster. In short, Wilson has seen it all when it comes to this sport, but each time she arrives at this national gathering she is renewed.

“It’s huge,” she says. “To be the Canadian champion is why you skate.”

For a big country it is an enormous event. 

It is understandable that if you live in a land where ice and skates are a comfortable fit, to be the best of the best is the greatest prize of all.

Members of the class are all bright and articulate. They aspire to be sports journalists in what has become a burgeoning field of work and play. They can readily identify the seminal moments of Canada’s national obsession. They know that Paul Henderson is the man who scored the goal to beat the Soviet Union in hockey’s 1972 Summit series. None were alive in that era but it matters little. They are also familiar with the legendary exploits of Gretzky, Howe, Richard and Orr.  

This group knows hockey.

But when it comes to recent iconic figures such as Beckie Scott, the pioneering cross-country skier, or double Olympic gold medal speed skater Catriona Le May Doan, things get more than a little fuzzy.

As far as alpine skiing star Nancy Greene goes, they haven’t a clue.

“The Olympics are only every four years,” reasoned one member of the class. “Players like Sidney Crosby in hockey and Steve Nash in basketball compete every season.”

It makes sense.

Except, in between the Olympic seasons those same high performance athletes are toiling on ice and snow in the name of Canada. They compete at huge events like World Cups and World Championships every year. It’s not as if they suddenly appear to win or lose a gold medal once a quadrennial at the Games.

And so it’s championship season around the World in winter sport.  

At the snowboarding summit in Spain, Canadian gold medallist Maelle Ricker is featured.  Soon, speed skating phenomenon and Olympic gold medallist Christine Nesbitt -- who personally swept the Canadian championships -- will try to conquer the world in her sport. 

Figure skater Patrick Chan will attempt to win his fourth national title in Victoria next week on the way to a legitimate shot at the world championship crown in Tokyo. Nordic skiers led by Olympians Alex Harvey and Devon Kershaw will race before hundreds of thousands of spectators at the worlds in Oslo, Norway.

The next legends are already on track and we’re almost a year removed from the Vancouver/Whistler Games.  

It’s time to end our Olympic hibernation and feast on the bevy of high performance sport that’s out there.     

As the Canadian juniors were settling for silver in Buffalo, Kershaw was winning his first World Cup gold medal in Italy - his third podium result at the Tour de Ski. It’s a grueling event featuring the best Nordic skiers in the world from 17 countries who compete in sprints and marathons over the course of 10 days in Germany and Italy.

There are eight races comprising every discipline, and with two to go Kershaw is contending for a place at the head of the pack when all is said and done, but the win was sweet.

“This is huge,” enthused Kershaw’s coach Justin Wadsworth over the phone from Toblach, Italy. 

“Winning a race is something every skier dreams of but most never achieve.”

Cross-country ski racing is ultra competitive, and Canadian men have rarely been a factor.  Only Pierre Harvey in the late 1980s and Russian transplant Ivan Babikov have won World Cup races in a sport dominated by Europeans. Kershaw’s results to start this post-Olympic season signal a new wave of Canadian Nordic stars, including Harvey’s son Alex, who is also poised for a top ten finish overall at the Tour de Ski.

“I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished here,” Kershaw said, just out of a recuperative, ice water bath in Italy. “No matter what happens the rest of the way, I’m absolutely thrilled.  Every year my goal is to win internationally and now I’ve done it.”

On the day Canada won hockey gold at the Olympics in Vancouver, Kershaw was finishing fifth in the 50K event, a mere 0.6 seconds from a medal and 1.6 seconds from gold. It barely got mentioned. All this in the toughest of marathons, burdened with the knowledge that along with Alex Harvey, he’d finished a close fourth in the team sprint and narrowly missed a breakthrough.

“It hurt and that opportunity is gone forever,” Kershaw reflected on defeat even as he celebrated his current victory. “Still, that close call in the 50K was the most motivating thing that could ever happen to me.”

There are two more races and literally two mountains to climb for Devon Kershaw at the Tour de Ski.

Canada’s Nordic knight has come out of the shadows and into the light.

Across the way, sounds emanated from the space age-looking Water Cube. Inside, children frolicked in a splash pool and on water slides. At the two most spectacular venues of the 2008 Summer Olympics, the exploits of Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt were a distant memory.
The whole place has been turned into an amusement park.

Back in Canada, less than a year removed from the home Olympics, the athletic achievers of 2010 are celebrated. Baseball slugger Joey Votto is the Lou Marsh Award winner as Canada’s Athlete of the Year. He is an excellent choice. From a small minority of Canadians, Votto excelled to become a most valuable performer in America’s pastime.

The most celebrated team of 2010 is the Canadian men’s hockey squad that captured Olympic gold in overtime against the United States, courtesy of the sublime Sidney Crosby. It’s not hard to figure out why. Canadians love hockey and this team gave the country a most coveted prize.

But, in an Olympic season and knowing that the Games come to this nation once every 22 years, it would be folly to undervalue the other men and women who gave Canada so much to cheer about in Vancouver/Whistler.

In selecting the best of 2010, the experts have reflected that Canadians are still pre-occupied with mainstream, North American, professional sport.

Therefore, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir who captured figure skating gold at both the Olympics and World Championships were an also ran as best team. 

Gold medallist Christine Nesbitt dominated the sport of speed skating before and after the Olympics but was seen by some as a disappointment because she didn’t win more medals in Vancouver.

Many believe that if Canada had failed to win men’s hockey gold in Vancouver the whole Games would have been, “…an unmitigated disaster.”

Sadly, this may be an accurate sentiment for many Canadians.

The true Olympians like Joannie Rochette, Alex Bilodeau, Charles Hamelin, Jon Montgomery and the rest have been regarded as pleasant amusements during the 16 days of the Games — the creators of fleeting moments.

What really matters on an ongoing basis is how Canadians fare in the arena of professional sport.

We, as a country, would do well to keep the Olympics fresh in our memories and recall how important those athletes have become as symbols of an emerging nation.

In a season where the Olympics were held on home turf, passionate arguments will be made for a legion of remarkable competitors who stake a claim to Lou Marsh Award consideration.

Time to stoke the fires and stir the pot.

Joey Votto, the National League’s MVP, has slugged his way into front-runner status. Steve Nash carried the Phoenix Suns to the NBA semi-final with a great playoff run. Sidney Crosby had another fine campaign for the Pittsburgh Penguins and scored the “Golden Goal” for Canada at the Olympics. Boxer Jean Pascal is the World light heavyweight champion. Georges St-Pierre, the mixed martial artist, is the UFC welterweight kingpin.

On the amateur side, ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir won Olympic gold in figure skating then pushed on to claim the World Championship title in Turin. Christine Nesbitt, the speed skater, took Olympic gold, dominated the last World Cup season and hasn’t lost a race this season. Erik Guay won the Super-G title on alpine skiing’s World Cup, a first for a Canadian since Steve Podborski in 1982. 

Alexandre Bilodeau deserves consideration for delivering the historic first gold medal by a Canadian on home soil when he tamed the moguls at the Olympics.

How about Heather Moyse? 

Who?

It’s not so far fetched. 

The 32-year old native of Summerside, P.E.I. teamed with Kaillie Humphries to win Olympic bobsleigh gold in Whistler. As the brakeman for Humphries, Moyse also won four medals, including gold in the World Cup season and set push start records. Then in the summer she traded her helmet for cleats and scored seven tries as a winger for Team Canada at the Women’s Rugby World Cup in England.

Not a bad year’s work.

“I just know that I would always rather be on the ice or field competing than on the sidelines,” Moyse said via email. “I’ve never considered myself to be a driven two-sport athlete. I’ve just been a driven athlete in whatever sports I’m doing at the time.”

Which is why there is an Island argument to be made in this Lou Marsh debate.

Why not?

In a year marked by so many great performances, there’s so much for Canadian fans of sport to be thankful for.

On Monday, as two women are welcomed, Angela James of Canada and American Cammi Granato, the Old Boys club will recognize pioneers of the game.

James warrants the closest look.

The winner of four world championships, including the first in 1990 when she scored 11 goals in five games and was a tournament all-star, James revelled in her life as a player.

“It meant the world to me,” she said of that inaugural world championship in Ottawa. “We never had anything like it prior to that. All I knew how to do was play hockey and that’s all I wanted to do.”

James grew up in Toronto’s Flemingdon Park where drugs and crime were rampant. She came from a poor family with a single mom, Donna Baratto, who sacrificed everything to give her daughter a chance.

“We didn’t have a car or a lot of money or anything like that,” she said. “But we did have a ton of love in our house. My mom never let the children go without.”

James was a big, tough, player who scored at will. She dominated for a generation while playing for the Toronto Aeros and was feared by her opponents. 

But James was left off the Canadian roster for the Nagano Olympics, where women’s hockey made its debut. A personality conflict with head coach Shannon Miller spelled the end of her Olympic dream.

“It was all I had worked for since the announcement in 1992 that women’s hockey would be an Olympic sport,” James said. 

“Based on past performance, present performance and everything else I brought to that program, I should have been there.”

Minus James, Canada went on to lose the gold medal to the United States, a team led by Cammi Granato.

Even the great American star realized it was James who was the trailblazer for women’s hockey.

“We are pioneers it’s true,” Granato said of the 1998 gold medallists from USA. 

“But players like Angela James from Canada were around and dominating before my group ever arrived. They paved the way and we came in at the right time.”

When James goes into the Hockey Hall, that pioneering spirit will be celebrated at long last.

Canadian ski racing star Erik Guay is anonymous as he strolls down Toronto’s busy Yonge Street. “Kind of looks like I’m carrying my makeup kit,” Guay grins.  “But this, for a skier, is like winning the Stanley Cup, I would imagine.”

With that, the 29-year-old native of Mont Tremblant, Quebec extracts the Crystal Globe emblematic of being the season’s best Super-G skier on the World Cup circuit. In Europe, he’s a god. Guay is the first Canadian since Steve Podborski in 1982 to win the Globe.

“It was the culmination of a lot of hard work,” Guay says with obvious pride as he cradles the Globe. “It meant so much to, not only me, but to my mother and father and to every member of our ski racing family.”

Erik Guay missed two gold medals by mere hundredths of a second at the Olympics in Whistler. For these close calls he’s been written off, along with other members of the Canadian Alpine Ski Team who failed to reach the podium, as underachievers.

Nothing could be further from the truth, especially in Guay’s case.

“The importance of winning that Crystal Globe is lost on many Canadians,” says World downhill champion John Kucera. “The Olympics is a big event but a one-day event. The Globe means that you are the force in your discipline all season long.”

Being underrated is nothing new for Guay. His statistics speak volumes. With 13 podium finishes on the World Cup, he is one shy of Ken Read’s career total of 14 and only seven behind Podborski, who is the all-time Canadian leader. Read and Podborski claim legendary status as members of the Crazy Canucks.

Meantime, Erik Guay shows every sign that he may someday soon surpass his heroes.

“He didn’t have anyone to show him the way,” acknowledges Manuel Osborne-Paradis who is a few years younger than Guay. “Erik was on his own on the way up and he’s figured out how to do this all on his own.”

He is a winter superstar who has eluded the limelight. For Erik Guay it’s a shame because only now is he entering his prime.

He is skiing’s constant Canuck who may someday be remembered as the greatest of them all.

Herein lies the culture shock that sport has come to embody. Instead of marvelling at hordes of athletes of all shapes and sizes obsessed with performing in adverse conditions and with pride on the line, the focus has turned to a few petulant professionals who dominate our attention because of the complaining they do and the cheating they engage in.

What’s up with Wayne Rooney?

Since when does a player hold a great club like Manchester United for ransom because it won’t buy the most expensive stars in the galaxy of international soccer? Rooney won’t play because he doesn’t get all the new toys for his sandbox. It reeks of the spoiled child who pouts in the corner when there aren’t enough presents under the Christmas tree.

Is that what sport has become?  You can’t have a winner unless you buy it?

Maybe Rooney should get on with the task of pulling up his socks and earning the millions he’s paid in order to make Manchester United a champion again. Perhaps he should lead by example and employ his enormous gifts that make him one of the world’s best footballers in order to make an actual difference on the field of play.

Why do NFL players complain because they can’t be headhunters anymore?

A Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker is whining because the league fined him for trying to rip someone’s head off. James Harrison, a highly decorated player, is threatening to retire because the NFL is attempting to change the culture of cheating. He says he can’t be as effective and aggressive without going after helmets.

Who is he kidding?

The Rugby Sevens were ferocious in India. There was full speed, open field, tackling that was both spectacular and thrilling. The New Zealanders, all clad in menacing black, were plenty aggressive as they demolished their opponents without the benefit of padding.

And oh yeah, they never went for the head ... never.

Maybe it’s simply a case of reverse culture shock, but modern professional sport has a different hue when you look at it through jet-lagged eyes.

It seems like it’s less about what happens on the field of play than off it.  

The athlete’s village, which was supposed to be the jewel, wasn’t ready and its unsanitary conditions threatened to keep many of the 6,000 athletes from 71 countries and territories home in the safety of Europe, Australia or Canada.

But the athletes showed up en masse in spite of Delhi’s deficiencies. Everyone crossed their fingers, rolled up their sleeves and got down to the business of competing at one of the world’s historic multi-sport gatherings.

Somehow, it all worked out.

The momentum that developed was striking. Athletes took over with their performances and diverted attention from what was lacking in the host city to what was present in the spirit of international sport.

By the middle of these Commonwealth Games, once tickets got into the hands of the public, the magnificent stadiums filled up.

There was also a vibrant atmosphere that flourished because the Indian athletes excelled once given the chance to compete on home soil and before adoring crowds.

In wrestling, world champion Sushil Kumar delivered overwhelming Commonwealth gold. The people were literally hanging from the balcony trying to get a look at him.

The noise from 60,000 fans at Nehru Stadium was deafening as they urged on the surprise winners of the women’s 4x400-metre relay.

It was inspiring to hear the Indians belt out their national anthem in unison.

“There’s a lot more to this than winning medals,” said Diane Cummins, the Canadian who won the 800-metre bronze.

“I guarantee you that most of the spectators here haven’t been to an international meet of this calibre. If it’s not for us, it’s for the people. It takes a competition like this in a country like this for our sport to grow. That’s why I’m here.”

Those sentiments were echoed by Sebastian Coe, the chairman of the London 2012 organizing committee.

Coe is a former Commonwealth and Olympic champion himself and one of the world’s most respected figures in sport.

“If we want the benefits that sport creates then we need to build a global capacity for sport,” Coe figured.

“That means you occasionally have to take it out of your own backyard to more challenging places. Is it worth it? Yes it is. Smart people think their way through it.”

In the end that’s what the athletes did. They embarked on New Delhi with open minds and the willingness to make the best of it.

That’s why the Games came to India.

“I was not letting that go,” said the effervescent Ohenewa Akuffo who claimed an overtime victory in the 72-kilograms category. “Coming to these Games we wanted to let other countries know you don’t mess with Canadian women, and I kind of like that.”

Akuffo’s smile was brilliantly vicious.

Justine Bouchard of Calgary knocked off a tough Nigerian fighter who was coached by Daniel Igali. This was the same Igali who had fled to Canada as a refugee and delivered Olympic gold for his adopted country at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. He became a legend in the process.

Then there was Carol Huynh of Hazelton, B.C. Tiny and unassuming, the Olympic champion of 2008 waded into the lion’s den to struggle mightily and eventually defeat the crowd favourite from India. 

“She fought pretty hard and it felt like the crowd was willing her to take it,” Huynh reflected with glittering gold adorning her neck. “But I thought to myself, this is mine!”

It was that rare evening when everything seemed to go right. In the one final where Canada was not represented, the wrestler from India won the gold medal. The place was packed and as the young woman, known simply as Geeta, paraded before the fans, the cameras and the media throng, she smiled, clutched her medal and held it aloft. An outpouring of joyous emotion ensued.

She stopped to do myriad interviews and her cauliflower ears only added to her charm. Geeta’s admirers loved her at first sight.

“She will be a star for all of the Indian youngsters,” offered one local journalist. “Men get so much attention here and so especially for the girls she has become suddenly very important.”

They are all important. 

As Commonwealth debutantes they have created a feel good story. The women of wrestling are the diamonds in the rough that New Delhi desperately needed to give these Games some lustre.

It’s becoming a familiar theme. As inept Commonwealth Games organizers and corrupt Indian politicians flail away in New Delhi on the eve of one of the world’s most historic and significant sporting spectacles, the competitors are made to wait.

It’s a shame because the major purpose of such multi-sport Games has never been to demonstrate the economic clout or cultural charm of the host city but instead to showcase the best in sport as performed by legions of diverse athletes full of youthful potential.

The Commonwealth gathering has for 80 years been known as “The Friendly Games.”
Now, as the opening ceremony at Nehru Stadium approaches, the ever- present officials who have come to dominate sport bicker, banter and barter, causing consternation for the athletes.
In spite of it all, the overwhelming majority of those who have earned the right to wear the Maple Leaf in New Delhi are determined to get there.

“My duty is to make sure I’m preparing myself for competition,” says Ohenewa Akuffo, a wrestler and world championship silver medallist. 

“Until my country let’s me know it is not safe to go I’m not going to let my Commonwealth experience pass me by.”

Two Canadian archers have pulled out of the Games for personal reasons. Others, like Olympian Crispin Duenas, remain steadfast.

“I never considered not going. I am solely there to compete for my country,” Duenas says.

“The reason that I want to go is to show that Canadians have the tenacity and the drive to compete no matter what the conditions might be.”

Canadian high jump champion Nicole Forrester is determined to compete at her fourth Commonwealth Games.

“To decide not to go at this point would be based on sensationalized fear and possibly leave me haunted with regret,” Forrester admits. “India may not have everything completed, but as long as they have a high jump pit, a bar and a surface for me to jump off, I’m good to go.”

If you listen to the athletes you can hear their resolve on this matter.

They will compete in spite of the commotion and as it has been at so many multi-sport Games in the recent past, they will save the day in India.