Last week, Scott Russell of CBC Sports wondered if it was the greatest game ever. You can read the article here.
My first reaction was "what"? Seriously? Vancouver was the best!!!!
But the more I thought about it, it did have an innocence that today's Games don't have.
Canada won 5 medals at the 1988 Olympic Games. Total! (and no gold medals) At the 2010 Olympics, we won 14 Gold! But the "greatest games" can't be just about Canada's success.
The 1988 Games was about the stories not only who won the medals.
A Twitter account was set up with tweets posted daily by Calgary Herald writer Jason Markusoff reliving the 1988 Olympic Games. It was wonderful to relive the Battle of the Brians and Battle of the Carmens, La Bomba Tomba and 3 time gold medallist Matti Nykanen.
If you missed it, you can relive it in its entirety here. There were other stories as well.
Eddie the Eagle captured our imagination. Canada even invited him to run in the Olympic relay for the 2010 Olympics - 23 years later.
The Jamaican Bobsleigh team has not been forgotten. I was thrilled to see the bobsleigh on display at the airport in Jamaica last year. There is also a tourist attraction that I didn't have time to visit.
These were stories about participation. They were athletes with a dream but without the means to become the best.
Although the Olympic Committee has turned towards including professional athletes to get television ratings and sponsorship, in 1988 these athletes from small countries with little or no snow captured our imagination.
We were introduced to athletes we had never heard of, got familiar with their struggles to compete at the Olympics and although they came in last place, we cheered for them.
Today's Olympics offer multi-millionaire athletes who view the Olympics as secondary to their major or Grand Slam titles. Athletes we see on television week in and week out. I'm still working on a blog post about professional athletes at the Olympics so will not dwell on this topic now. Suffice to say that I struggle with their inclusion. On the one hand I want the best athletes representing their countries. On the other I want the athletes and sports to value Olympic tradition and values.
It's sad to say that perhaps this is what the world has come to. Attention spans aren't long enough to listen to the stories of athletes they haven't heard of yet.
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