I was in Grade 2 at the time. Our principal was a huge hockey fan, so he live-streamed the final parts of the final game between Canada and the USA on a projector during lunch. Now, I’ve always liked the Summer Olympics better, mainly the swimming and the tennis, but I’m not going to lie. The hockey final of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics is not something I’m going to forget. I remember the players skating across the ice. I remember the puck flying around the rink. I remember the Grade 6 kids in front of me making racist jokes and getting yelled at. But most of all, I remember Sidney Crosby’s gold medal goal at 8 minutes into overtime, the 90 some kids in the gym screaming their heads off, and Canada winning the game.
I’ll be very honest, sports have never been my forte. Badminton is arguably the sport I’m best at, and I’m still awful at it.
However, just because I am utter garbage at every sport doesn’t mean I dislike them. I’m that guy in your school gym class who gets super excited to play baseball and always tries their best, then proceeds to strike out every time they’re up to bat. That’s still better than the guy who just never tries, I guess. I should know because I’ve been both. When I was younger, I really didn’t try during sports. I wasn’t good at them, so why would I try when my 100% is equal to the other kid’s 70%? However, when I was younger and still a bit right now, I also was extremely impressionable. I saw those “People Are Awesome” videos and I wanted to be like them. I heard an amazing song and I wanted to play it on the piano (It’s called Flower Dance by DJ Okawari. You’re a cool person if you know it.). You read a blog post on a site called “Youth Are Awesome” that was so good that you decided to read the other posts and eventually chose to become a YAA blogger. So back then, when I saw the Olympic athletes playing at a level 17.34 times higher than I would ever reach, I naturally wanted to be like them. I began to actually try when playing sports. Nowadays, I’ve long given up on being an Olympics athlete, but I still make sure to put in that extra effort while playing sports, and I try to do my best at most things, even when I’m awful at them. Writing blog posts is a great example of this.
The 2010 Winter Olympics didn’t only affect me. It shook Canada as a whole. That year, Canada broke the record for most gold medals won by a hosting country; 14. All over the country interest in sports and Canadian culture drastically rose. Everyone, from PEI to BC, was proud of Canada, even the kids in my school who didn’t like sports at all were talking about the Olympics. Other reported benefits across Canada were the increased involvement of minorities along with a larger sense of recognition for disabilities. While a lot of good things happened elsewhere, the biggest changes were where the Olympics actually were hosted: British Colombia. British Columbia’s economy grew with new businesses and 45,000 new jobs appearing, along 226 million dollar increase in tourist spending, all of which were attributed to the Winter Olympics. People speculate the net gain from the games alone was 2.3 billion dollars. That’s enough money to supply the annual salaries of approximately 64,000 Canadians.
The Olympics may be a source of pride for all athletes from across the globe, but the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics were more than that for Canada. They were a symbol of success for us, and I hope that the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics go just as well.