Going for Gold

The hopes of a nation are riding on the shoulders of 23 athletes as the 2010 Winter Olympics start today in Vancouver.

That’s not the total number of competitors Great Britain is sending to western Canada but the host nation’s men’s ice hockey squad.

For Canadian ice hockey, read English football, only colder, more physical and more dedicated.
Many young Canadians grow up playing hockey on homemade backyard rinks in temperatures well below freezing.

And that’s just the start.

If they work hard enough, are determined enough, and more importantly lucky enough to be blessed with some talent on skates, they will soon be playing their way through the junior ranks.
And at just 16-years-old those kids can be playing in front of National Hockey League sized crowds.

It’s a telling statement that, as Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, performed a good luck Vancouver ceremony with James Wright, Canadian high commissioner to the United Kingdom, the pair crossed hockey sticks in Trafalgar Square.

Not crossed ski poles, or sitting in a bobsleigh, but hockey sticks.

Canada will undoubtedly be near the summit of the final medal table, but for many who reside north of the 49th parallel, the nation’s success will be based solely on the performance of one team.

There are plenty of other medal hopes.

Howard Martin and Cheryl Bernard will be favourites to lead their teams to curling gold, Manuel Osbourne-Paradis and Erik Guay are medal hopes in downhill skiing, with the freestyle skiing and figure skating teams expecting to make the podium as well.

But it will all come back to the “good old hockey game.”

It may seem unfair to place such huge pressure on only one team for one medal, but it is just a fact of life for Canadians.