The Decibel - The Paris Olympics might be exactly what we need right now

Episode Date: July 23, 2024

The Globe and Mail’s Cathal Kelly has high hopes for the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris. He thinks that 2012 was the last great Olympics and right now, with so much conflict and division, the world really needs a global event to rally around.He explains what the Olympics offer beyond the highest competition for amateur athletes, as well as, what Canada has to do to have a successful Games and which Canadians may end up becoming cultural heroes.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

So how are you feeling about the Paris Games? I'm feeling incredibly upbeat. I think this is going to be the first fun games in a long time. So I'm very excited to see what they've managed. Kahal Kelly is a columnist at the Globe and Mail, whose specialty is capturing how sports and culture intersect. He's headed to Paris to cover the upcoming Olympics. You've covered, I think, six Olympics now?

I've covered six. You're right. I added it up this morning. This will be my seventh. So, I mean, have, I guess, over time, have they lost a bit of their shine? Are you feeling that at all? I actually do. I was thinking about, like, I rank them in my own personal ranking, and I started off on the high, which was London 2012, which was amazing. And then it just got steadily worse until, you know, Beijing, the prison Olympics, because you couldn't go anywhere and you couldn't talk to anyone, couldn't see anyone. Because of COVID. Because of the COVID. So, I mean, it's gotten progressively less. It's always fun. Let's say that this is not another journalist complaining about a free trip to the Olympics, but it has gotten progressively less and less fun, certainly less fun for the people who aren't journalists who are going to see it.

But this Games, you're thinking, is going to be different. I think this has the potential. I think people are now, there's a really pent up, built up feeling that people would like a big global party that isn't suffused with politics or political meaning. I think people want a bit of a respite from that. And the Olympics is meant to provide that. So today on the show, Kahal is going to discuss the great promise of the Olympics, whether Paris can live up to it, and how Canada is expected to perform. I'm Meenaka Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail.

Kahal, it's great to have you here. It's good to be here. Thanks for having me. So let's just start by talking about the Olympics itself, Gahal. Obviously, this is the biggest international competition for amateur athletes. But beyond the athletics, at this point in time, what do the Olympics offer the world? I think it is that idea that it is an apolitical space. Of course it isn't. It isn't actually, but it's aspirationally apolitical, a point at which enemies can come together.

This isn't about friends being friendly. It's about enemies being friendly. That's what the Olympics is supposed to offer at its best, a point at which representatives from either country, perhaps on either side of a war or some sort of conflict, can come together in friendly competition and prove to their fellow citizens that such things are possible. And out of that is a wellspring of peace, possibly. But this, I think, is what the Olympics can offer going forward. I think it's why it's such an important idea. I think we've gotten a little sidetracked with the athletics part of it.

The sport is not the thing. The sport is the vehicle. The idea is getting the whole world together. This is a really interesting thing to talk about, especially in the world of today where we do see a number of conflicts, right? A lot of division. You've been to a number of games yourself. Is there a particular games that you remember that I guess shows us this example of what an Olympics could be when it really shined? Pyeongchang was that idea of North and South Korea, though it was aspirational,

but didn't quite manage it. But I mean, just that they tried was amazing to watch. You see it in little interactions between athletes. I mean, there's always going to be examples of athletes who, you know, we've seen in the past, a couple of Olympics instances where athletes won't compete against each other because their countries are in conflict. But more often than not, what you will see is that athletes who are supposed to be from conflicting countries coming together and joining arms. And I think that's such a powerful symbol to the millions of people back home for them. You know, we're lucky enough in Canada that we don't really think about these things too much, but most of the world does. And the Olympics may be the only time that they really see this on television, live in a space that is important.

You've talked about how the last few Olympic Games, it's been more difficult to get people engaged. But I want to ask you about the first games that you attended in London, Gahal. What was that like? What made London amazing is because, per the usual, there had been huge warnings sent out to the English people and Londoners in particular, that the games are going to destroy everything, that nothing would work, transportation would collapse, possibly things would start blowing up, you know, it's time to get out, time to leave. And there was also a weird feeling in that country that they were going to fail athletically and embarrass themselves. And by the end of that Olympics, it started out a bit downbeat. You could feel there, you know, people were worried. People were off the streets. Streets were pretty empty. You could feel there was some

early hiccups, like security problems. But by the end of it, I remember Mo Farah winning a gold medal on the last day just before the closing ceremony. And that city was heaving. Like it was wild. Like people were in the streets dancing. Every bar was full. It was just fantastic. It was the epitome of what the Olympics can be. That's a really special cocktail, though, because you don't often get it in a city of that quality and caliber with that much infrastructure, where their team is doing a lot better than they thought, and they're really

feeling their oats. It's probably the last great moment for Britain, to be honest. Everything was downhill from there. Well, there's a lot to go through there, but we'll focus on the Olympics for now. That sounds like you're painting a really wonderful picture of London, right? And I guess I wonder, we're coming up to the Paris Olympics. The world is very different now from 2012, right? I think maybe we could argue it was easier to put politics aside then. Is that kind of environment really possible in 2024? Like, it feels like there's more of a risk that things like politics could really bleed into these Paris Games.

I think politics will always bleed into the Games. That's part of it. It's how it's managed. And that's really up to the athletes. And it's very unfair, I think, to ask a bunch of 22 and 25 and 30-year-olds to be the exemplars of good behavior and peaceful intent. But that is what's being asked of them. So it's small gestures made by athletes will determine how the politics of that work.

Because they really represent their country in this situation. So, you know, if you get a Ukrainian punch a Russian on a medal podium, then, you know, that's a statement. If you get a Ukrainian shake hands with a Russian, that's a very different kind of statement will be made. I think also, I wonder if like back in 2012, you're right. I mean, it was a very different world, but it was also you could say and do things. I think there was a greater freedom that you would be free of consequences. It would not have real world consequences if you came out and

said something wild at an Olympics. Now, I think people believe if you were to do, you know, might have real world implications if somebody was to say something really provocative or do something incredibly provocative. So I think that actually might serve to take some of the edgy politics out of it. Okay. So in a way, people might not want to go there in a sense? Yeah. I don't think you'd want to curse out or try to make an international incident happen if you thought your country might be lobbing bombs in the next day. I think you might be less likely. You would want to be more conciliatory. I suspect this is going to be Olympics where you see a lot of hands across the aisle, where athletes are trying to be seen to be calming influences. Let's talk a little bit more about that, because I think we see tensions are

really high kind of in general these days, honestly. So tell me a little bit more about that. Like why, since the stakes feel higher, maybe this will be kind of a more open conciliatory space at the Olympics. I think that's what the athletes always want. The athletes, it seems to me from talking to them, this is for a lot of them, for most of them, maybe for all of them, this can be the greatest moment of their lives. This is the end of years of struggle in many cases. It's never talking to the winner that really moves you. It's talking to the loser or talking to the person who's in the middle of the pack. And they come out just as a glow because they know they've written the first line of their obituary if they were to do nothing else in their lives.

And in that moment, I think people want to make big, hopeful gestures. I think it's just, it's primed for those kinds of emotions. That's what the Olympics is about, right? It's not about athletics. And certainly we talk about the records and how many seconds to do this thing and versus, but what you remember out of is people and emotions, how they made you feel. And I think the athletes nowadays certainly are primed for that. They understand how important it is.

And I think most of them want to have an incredible moment in what is probably the biggest stage any of them will ever occupy. I want to look back a little bit because there have, of course, been some incidents at the Olympics where things have not gone well. Of course, the 1972 Olympics in Munich come to mind where Palestinian militants murdered members of Israel's Olympic team. I guess, how do we think about things with that in mind, the context of what is possible to happen? Well, I mean, the Olympics have changed immensely since then. Mostly it's a security operation, like what happened in 72,

where you had terrorists jumping a low fence in order to get into the athlete's village, along with other athletes, including a bunch of Canadians that Canadians that night is inconceivable that could happen again so that level of violence it's always possible of course you know I don't want to see it but it's probably unlikely and I think that's that experience in Munich really shaped the way the Olympics approach things once again I think it's a thing like people understand how how symbolically important it is. And so I'm not sure, I think the Olympics is off limits for most governments, certainly for that kind of thing. Can it happen again? Of course, anything can happen, but I think now you'd be picking around the edges of it. Atlanta is a good

example. There was a bombing, but they. They went after spectators in that case. So I guess that's always possible. God, I hope not. So violence is one thing. There's also a bit of a history of political protest at Olympics. I'm thinking about that famous image of the black American athletes raising their gloved fists in the air. That was, I think, during the 1968 games. That was largely considered an act

of solidarity with the black civil rights movement. How likely do you think it is that we're going to see athletes making some kind of political statement at these games? I'm sure there will be a few. The IOC tries to discourage it. I don't think that works. I think that often backfires, but they don't hammer down on it, which is smart. You haven't seen many though, for a lot of talk of it, you don't really see it anymore. I don't think anybody wants the attention. What we don't consider often is that the athlete has then overshadowed everything else they've done and that defines them from that point on, is that one gesture. I think a lot of athletes don't want that kind of attention, even if they feel strongly about something.

So I think they'd be more likely to talk about it outside in Olympics rather than try to use the Olympics to do something that is going to trail them around for a long time, probably create a lot of problems if they want to continue doing sports, regardless of what the gesture is. It's just considered such poor etiquette in Olympics to overshadow the event and to overshadow your colleagues by doing something like that. We'll be back in a moment. All right.

So far, Gahal, we've talked about what makes a successful Olympics kind of broadly, right, in the grand scheme of things. But let's actually look at the idea of a successful Olympics for Canada now. So what qualifies as a successful summer games in Paris for us? I just did a column on this. So I had a little think about it myself. I pinned it to the idea that Own the Podium was proposed, this idea that Canada, this program that was designed to peak performance for Canadian athletes. This is a lot of government money. A lot of government money. And it's multifaceted. It's not just Own the Podium.. This is a lot of government money. A lot of government money, and it's multifaceted. It's not just on the podium.

It's just a lot of money flowing in in a more targeted way. So rather than giving the Olympic program a bunch of money, they would figure out the things that we were really good at, make sure that they got well-funded so that a fourth-place finisher could become a first-place finisher. So very targeted funding. Yeah, and it was a controversial idea at the time. It was 20 years ago that it was proposed. And Canada had always been pretty competitive, but Canada has become much more competitive.

Per capita, we usually finish in the same neighborhood as a New Zealand or a Netherlands or a South Korea at the Summer Olympics. And for per capita, that's a pretty good neighborhood to be in. I would argue that over the last 20 years that we have done so well that performance isn't really the thing anymore. Like we used to sit around, Ken, I do remember covering Olympics, London in particular, where people were really gnashing their teeth because we'd yet to win a gold into the second week. And you know, really that conversation starts so quickly about, are we just a bunch of losers?

Like, are we just, do we suck at everything? You know, and it really can, is really good at getting down on itself. And then Rosie McLennan won in trampoline and freed us. And I still remember it was like celebrations in the media center, like of the small group of Canadians that like we were kind of like, which you would never see at a pro event, you know, that we're kind of like, yeah, we did it. So now, now we can relax. I would argue now that Canada has done so well, and is so consistently good, that this isn't even a consideration anymore, that we're not there to achieve a certain number. We're just there to compete. We slug with the best of them. I think it's a wonderful place

to be as a Canadian. Our Olympians and our Olympic problem, I would say, is probably the cultural endeavor that most of us agree we're into, right? People who aren't readers don't like books and people who don't like art don't go to museums, but people who don't like sports still watch the Olympics in this country. We get behind those athletes. And so they're a wonderful expression of us. And so they're one of the few areas in which Canada, I think one of our problems takes itself seriously. Like we approach this quite seriously. This is something we're good at. And we puff our chests out a little bit over it, brings all our squabbling regions together. Nobody, nobody, you know, when you see a Canadian win a gold medal, the first thought in your head

is this was that person from Alberta? Was that person from Quebec? Like, we don't think that. They're just Canadians. I think that's why Canadians love the Olympics. Everybody loves the Olympics, but I think Canadians love it especially. And I would also suggest that all Olympics now are successful Olympics for Canada. Interesting. So, I mean, when you're talking about this, you know, it's the regional divides kind of disappear. It sounds like it's a bit of an exercise in patriotism then, right? Which the Olympics is to an extent. Patriotism comes in and out of fashion. I don't think it's a dirty word in Canada, but it's, you know, in a certain social media, people kind of sneer at it.

Canadians, like I said, I don't think we take ourselves very seriously. I think we think we're not that good at anything. And it's the reason why we don't produce great culture, which is sad to me. Like, I think if we took ourselves a little more seriously, our TV would be better. We'd watch our own movies. But this is one area in which we do take ourselves seriously. I think Own the Podium got over that hump where people like, why are we spending money on this? And people were like, oh, you know, Vancouver winning the gold medal hockey game, that felt good. Let's keep doing that. Like a couple of gold medals is nice. Having a sprinter who can compete with Usain Bolt, that was interesting. We all liked that. And I think the Olympics puts us over that hub. I think we should all, we should think about the Olympics

more than just during the Olympics. You also mentioned how like we can latch on to specific people like Rosie McLennan who won that, that the gold medal finally, right? So let's talk a little bit about that, too, like this connection with specific athletes that comes out of this. Well, that's, I mean, when you watch the pros, it's like the Seinfeld joke, you know, these days you're just rooting for laundry. And it's true. You're not really rooting for the person. The person is probably going to go to Boston for more money in a couple of years. But at the Olympics, it's not like people are changing nationalities very often. These are our people.

So when they come out and they're just so overwhelmingly winsome and charming. You never see a Canadian athlete out there and think, oh, God, this guy. You very rarely have that feeling. So when you have someone like Penny Alexiuk or Damian Warner, and there's such wonderful representatives of this country. And it's also one of the rare moments. I had that feeling after Warner won the decathlon, I was there in Tokyo and it was in an empty stadium.

It was a bit of a letdown, right? Because there's nobody around to cheer them. He comes out, he's the greatest athlete alive because he's just won the Olympic gold medal in decathlon. But what really stuck you, and of course, because he's won the gold medal, he's the last person out. He's getting stopped by every TV crew before he gets to the print journalists. And so all the other competitors come out, everybody else who's just, he's just beaten,

come out and they're from all over the place. They were just gushing about Damian Warner, about what a great person he was and how wonderful it was to see someone of that caliber win a gold medal. And it was genuine. Like it was not the put on you see. And you really, yeah, you felt, yeah, that's like, that's one of us.

We did this. You feel you share these. You don't, but you know, maybe you contributed a few nickels, but you feel you share in this accomplishment in a way you never do with professionals. Like you really don't, but, you know, maybe you contributed a few nickels, but you feel you share in this accomplishment in a way you never do with professionals. Like you really don't. If the Toronto Maple Leafs win a Stanley Cup, it will not feel to me as if I have won a Stanley Cup. Yeah.

And it's like, you know, people overnight become household names. Like I think like Tessa Virtue, Scott Moyer, Clara Hughes, like these are huge icons in Canada. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's, you have one, especially the ones you don't see coming. Penny Alexiuk is the great example recently. But when somebody just pops out of nowhere and does something amazing, those are the biggest athletes in this country, really. Those are the athletes we value most.

After the games, like what kind of status do they hold in the country and in people's minds, I guess? Well, huge. I mean, that's how, you know know it's something that happened at the Olympics really matters if you can remember it a month after the Olympics. And to be honest, there's a structural problem with the Olympics. We always tend to remember the things that happened first, best. So there's no greater curse at the Olympics than to win a gold medal in the last day. By that point, people are just like, whatever, the Olympics,

are they still on? But on the first day, I mean, that's the ultimate if you can manage that. Unless it's like the hockey game or something. Unless it's like the hockey game. That's absolutely true. But I mean, so the Olympics is really structurally tilted towards swimmers because they start right at the beginning. Like Summer McIntosh will be the star of this Games, not just because she's so good, but because she swims right at the beginning. You mentioned Summer McIntosh and there's big expectations for her in the pool. Who else, I guess, should we keep our eyes out for as the game starts?

I mean, you know, the politic answer is keep an eye out for them all. They're all so great. Who are you particularly excited to see? I'm particularly interested in Summer McIntosh, obviously, that swim team in general, that women's swim team, which I think has a chance to become sort of an iconic and overwhelming force. You know, mostly this is about, I think of the Olympics mostly as a way of us sticking it to the Americans. So basketball, you know, I had a friend who was at a July 4th picnic in Wisconsin

with his wife's family. And he was telling me that he had very sports interested people he was meeting there, the family, and they were saying, like, where do your basketball players come from? Like, where did you get them? And he was like, well, they're Canadian. They couldn't accept that they were like from here, that they couldn't be this good. We must have gone somewhere else to fetch them, America, I assume. So yeah, I'd really like to see the men's basketball team stick it to the States. I'm not sure it's possible, but I would love that. Damian Warner, again, will be a favorite for that decathlon medal.

The women's soccer team is always being counted out for the most part, but I don't think so. And there's going to be some new events in Paris, too. So I think it's breakdancing that's going to make its debut. I mean, that's my number one. Yeah, I should have said that. Phil Wizard is going to be my number one. We have Canada, as you might expect, the world's greatest break dancer, Phil Wizard from BC. I'm really stoked. People are basically handing it to him. It's a crazy event. It's a wild, wild sport. I guess it is a sport. I can't do it. If you haven't watched it,

watch that. Make time. Can you explain? I can't do it. If you haven't watched it, like, watch that. Make time. Can you explain? I have not seen it. How does it work? Like, they don't know the music. So they have to be able to perform a routine that has some elements they have to do, but most of it is just purely creativity. And they haven't heard the music before it starts. So, I mean, as you can imagine, like, dancing to Led Zeppelin is a little different than dancing to Madonna.

So they have to be able to be prepared to hear any sort of beat and do something to it. It's incredible to watch, like, because people really crumble under the pressure. He's the best. He's the world champion. Wow. Just before I let you go here, Kahal, we've talked about successful games in general, successful games for Canada. But you yourself are going to be in Paris. You've been to a number of games.

I guess what does a successful Olympic games look like for you? Oh, just a lot of incident. I'm a lot of things, you know, obviously I don't want anything terrible to go wrong, like not terrible, terrible, but I'd like a lot of things to go wrong. That's good fun. And a lot of things to go right. I just, I want interesting things to happen. Like the worst games for me is where we spend the whole time talking about sports. That would be very boring for me. I like the air conditioning to fail and, you know, all those things. I'm really interested in air conditioning for very personal reasons.

I'm very interested in the air conditioning. You want to come out of an Olympics having these iconic moments of, you know, I'm thinking of like Muhammad Ali lighting the flame in Atlanta. You want to see something like that. Something that you know 20 years from now people will ask you about. That's what I'm thinking of like Muhammad Ali lighting the flame in Atlanta. You want to see something like that, something that you know 20 years from now people will ask you about. That's what I'm looking forward to. Cool. Thanks for being here and have a good time in Paris.

That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy-McLaughlin, and Michal Stein. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.