Not pulling any punches

Russian media vicious over Canada’s extraordinary performance at Winter Olympics

By Jonathan Ryan

As I finish writing this, the Canadian men’s hockey team is accepting gold medals. Despite the criticism of some of our European friends, Canadians, Americans, and the vast majority of other visiting nations seem to be very pleased about how the Winter Olympics have gone. Hell, it’s been enough to make Canadians almost completely forget about that thing with the PM – you know, that parliamentary thing, it had something to do with Afghanistan maybe? After all of the fuss about the “unfair” (read: commonplace) practice of the host country’s athletes having more access to certain facilities, the majority of the visiting world seemed to settle down, win some medals, and have a pretty good time. That is, except for the Russians. After a Games that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev described as “beneath any criticism” some elements of the Russian media have decided to play Johnny-come-lately to the somewhat stuck-up, entirely-too-quick criticism of the British press. According to the Russians, we are responsible for the upset in men’s figure skating that saw American Evan Lysacek win the gold over former Olympic champion Evgeny Plushenko of Russia. It came as quite a surprise to people who happen to follow men’s figure skating (sparking a debate on the essentialness of the quad and the manliness of figure skating).
Not so surprising was the Russian reaction. I would expect them to direct their ire towards the United States, after all the Russians always have had a thing for beating and getting beaten by the U.S. However, the suggestion that Canada is some sniveling henchman working in the interest of American Olympic superiority, is not just insulting, it’s stupid. To the Russian media we’re a country of cowards – scrawny little brother to a “beefy” USA. I know, the beefy comment is particularly comical, I only wish I knew Russian so I wouldn’t have to rely on someone else’s translation – I’d hate to think something this hilarious was a mistake.
Of course, Russia being Russia, a little thing like figure skating or a game of hockey is never far from a half bitter, half arrogant geo-political statement about who’s still a big manly country. They seem to draw a direct parallel to the recent assertion that they own everything in the arctic. All because they’re bigger than Canada and a bunch of other northern nations, stating that this is one of the sources of our mincy-ness and insecurity. The reality of the situation is, like the British, the Russians are unconsciously anxious and insecure about their own upcoming turn as Olympic hosts. Following in the British media’s footsteps, they’ve chosen to try to rip on the easy target (a country in the middle of the business of hosting the games) and they’ve chosen to go for the easy burn, our close relationship with our American neighbors.
I know it might be difficult to understand, given the adversarial nature of what passes for Russian “foreign policy,” but two civilized countries like the U.S. and Canada can compete with each other on a daily basis and still be on good terms. More than that, in that spirit of competition we are forced to respect each other. In the end, an American upstaged the Russian champ for figure skating gold, and the Russian PM cancelled his trip to the closing ceremony after we canned the Russian hockey team. Then we beat out our beefy neighbours for two sets of gold medals in hockey and a bunch of other medals to boot, and we may have just won more gold medals than any other country that hosted the Winter Olympics. Now the Russians are free to leave our lovely country. We’ll see them again in Sochi where they can attempt to belittle, and then get beaten by the rest of the world in the comfort of their own homes. I don’t know if the figure skating results will be our fault, but the beating they’re going to take on the ice, that’ll be our fault. That is, unless our beefy buddies get to them first.

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