IcedCap wrote:
bootlegga wrote:
You need to stop smoking the stuff you sell. Canada is a winter nation and we care FAR more about Hockey than we ever will about the Summer Olympics.
Personally, I could care less if we win a medal at the Summer Olympics. It's all about bragging rights and undetectable drugs, not sportsmanship these days. Anyone who thinks Croatia is a better place to live because they have more medals than us is welcome to emigrate there.
Kudos to the athletes who compete, but our government has far more important things to spend money on, like Arctic sovereignty or tax breaks.
I don't know what the smoking reference is about, maybe you're mixing me up with someone else.
Canada is not a winter nation, look out the window how much snow do you see? besides what does the weather have to do with indoor sports like swimming, gymnastics, wrestling etc etc. You do have something right though people care about Hockey more but its funny how no one complains about all the rinks and arenas that get built with tax payer money which is basically back-handed funding for hockey development.
Really? That's funny. When I was in the mountains this past weekend, there was plenty of snow...
Face facts, we only have maybe 3 months of summer in most of Canada and the rest of the year is too cold to train outside for many sports. Last time I checked, using all those indoor facilities weren't free. But if you live Australia, you can go swimming pretty much anytime you get to a lake or the ocean. Same with jogging, cycling and tons of other sports. Hard to do that year round here. And other sports get ingrained in a nation's pysche, like hockey and Canada, Baseball and the US, Judo and Japan, etc. That means more people participate in these sports and those countries therefore have a deeper talent pool to pick candidates from, and therefore a better chance to get on the podium.
People can bitch and moan about Canadians finishing 4th or 6th or 20th, but the reality is that that is pretty damn good. To be able to say you were the 4th best person in the WORLD (out of 6+ billion people) in 2008 in your event is not too shabby IMHO.
As a patriot, I'd love to see Canada get 50 medals. As a realist, I don't want us to spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually on something that boils down to favoritism from judges, undetectable drugs and other BS.
Like I said, I can think of far better uses for $400 million (what Australia spent prior to the Sydney Olympics) or the billions the US/China/Russia spend on training programs, drugs and gifts for winning medals.
CKA Uber 
![[flag]](./images/smilies/smilie_flag.gif "Canada Flag")
CKA Uber 
![[huh]](./images/smilies/icon_scratch.gif "huh?"){kind=icon}
