Vancouver Olympics and the Gold Medal Game: Cha-Ching, Cha-Ching
He shoots, he scores. It is so jingoistic. However, how could you not be caught up in it over the last two weeks of the Vancouver Olympics? I loved it just as much as anybody else. Seeing Canadians reach the gold podium made me feel good. Seeing Sidney Crosby pop that third goal against the USA was wonderful. Canadians need to celebrate from time to time and he sure provided the avenue for that last Sunday.
When Sidney Crosby’s goal went down I fully expected to see people out on the street in Dresden. When I looked out I saw nothing, the reason being everybody was still beside their television set grasping the depth of the moment. As I have many American friends and editors I couldn’t help but announce to them how I felt. When I got into the twitter sphere they were all kinds of tweets about how good everybody felt. I wanted to congratulate my American friends on how good their team was. They wanted to congratulate me on how good my team was. The funny part is none of us are athletes and none of us had anything to do with it other than what’s in our soul.
I am old enough to remember the disappointment as a teenager of Canada not winning gold at Montreal in 1976. I was so disappointed that Greg Joy did not win the gold medal on the last day of the Olympics, taking silver instead. However, I had no illusions. I did not expect Canada to take many medals because we were not very good at any of those Olympic sports compared to the Soviet bloc. Ditto for 1988 in Calgary. So when you put it in that context it makes the 14 gold medals, a world record, and a real stunner. I could not have even imagined that in 1976.
Interestingly enough I felt that the Vancouver Olympics as well as the gold-medal game was going to have a very positive economic effect on the Canadian economy. It does seem to me that “consumer confidence” was boiling over during the Olympic games. When you feel good, you generally go out and spend money versus when you don’t. So I felt as the games went by, Canadians were spending money and the gold medal game would send many of us over the top. That’s to say nothing about the economic impact on Vancouver where international visitors spent $5.2 million on opening day. Cha-ching.
On top of all this we got some very good economic news Monday. Statistics Canada announced that the Canadian economy GDP grew by over 5% in the fourth quarter of 2009. That is incredible ladies and gentlemen. If we get that kind of growth in 2010 I see a huge boost to not only job numbers but also wealth. This is happening despite our American friends still mired in negative economic territory. So when you had the Vancouver Olympics plus the gold medal game to this I think we’ll see similar growth rates for the first quarter of 2010.
Having said that, is this the time to be writing a column about Canadian economics? I don’t think so. This country almost exploded on Sunday night. In fact when my Twitter page lit up with comments from my American editors I told them that. There is something about hockey, which bonds Canadians despite how casual a fan you might be.
Take your loyal scribe for instance. People that know me know that I am an avid Detroit Piston fan. I never miss a game, I either watch it, PVR it or check the score the next day. That stems from the historical fact that I grew up in Southwest Ontario where the NBA has always had a following with our proximity to Detroit. Nonetheless, I have always been a hockey fan but as I’ve grown older I’ve turned into much more casual a fan. I am that way because I don’t find NHL hockey as exciting as I once did. When the Stanley Cup playoffs are on I enjoy it much more than during the regular season. Needless to say, when we formed team Canada and go into international competition something changes. I’m just like any other Canadian out there, an avid hockey fan, bonded to everybody else wanting Canada to claim our game.
I am not particularly comfortable with that. I never get too tied up with emotional strings and essentially that is what that is. Needless to say, it was a great victory for Canada. Yes, it made me proud to be a Canadian. It was all such fun.